Social policies could spark class war, says social mobility adviser Milburn believes there is 'not a snowball's chance in hell' of meeting statutory targets for eliminating child poverty by the end of decade. Government social policies are in danger of generating a class war between the "squeezed middle" and people on the lowest incomes, the social mobility adviser Alan Milburn has warned. Milburn also said there was "not a snowball's chance in hell" of meeting statutory targets for eliminating child poverty by the end of this decade, and called for the prime minister to show stronger leadership on the issue. Giving evidence to MPs on the education select committee, Milburn said there was a risk of "pitting the interests of the kids at the bottom against the kids in the middle" by regularly debating the merits of giving people benefits or helping them find work - rather than doing both together. "We can see it reflected in British public attitudes surveys: whereas there's a high degree of empathy for children in poverty, there is not a high degree of sympathy for their parents, and there is less and less sympathy over time for efforts to ameliorate, on behalf of government, the financial position of those at the bottom end," said Milburn. If you end up with a situation where working-class families are pitted against middle-class families, that is a really big public policy and political problem because you need permission from the majority to address these issues. Milburn, currently the government's independent reviewer on social mobility, was being questioned by MPs before his appointment as chairman of a new independent social mobility commission. As a minister in the last government Milburn defended Labour's record in getting more than 1 million children out of poverty, but admitted it had not gone far enough. He also refused to be drawn by MPs into scoring points against the coalition government. Instead he questioned whether any of the major parties were prepared to spend the estimated £19bn needed for "a bigger redistribution of income than we have seen at any time in our century" - the amount experts have estimated is needed to meet the 2020 target of eradicating child poverty in the UK. "It's time for all political parties to put up or shut up," said Milburn. I don't believe there's a snowball's chance in hell we'll meet the 2020 target. That's widely privately acknowledged, and it's time to publicly acknowledge it. Instead of abandoning targets, the government should set interim targets, and define a priority group of children in poverty to help focus efforts on the most needy, he said. Evidence from expert organisations including the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that to successfully reduce and eliminate child poverty the government would need to use benefits and tax credits, create jobs and provide "universal, affordable" childcare, said Milburn, who suggested that the eradication target could be met by 2025-2027. This could only happen with leadership from the top of government, he said. "This is not just a matter for secretaries of state, members of the cabinet ... or the deputy prime minister; above all else that requires the engagement of No 10 Downing Street," he added. An earlier report by Milburn, published in May, examined the stranglehold on professional careers by people who had been to fee-paying private schools, a study which claimed the most "exclusive" profession was journalism. "If it was any other walk of life, we'd say it was social engineering, with the stranglehold of the few on the main top jobs," he told MPs.