'Gordon Brown has put 100,000 more children into poverty', claims David Cameron, in new attack on traditional Labour territory

David Cameron made another audacious raid into Labour territory yesterday by promising to do more than Gordon Brown to end poverty.

He challenged the Prime Minister to release statistics which he claims will prove that Labour is losing its fight to take a million children out of poverty.

Buoyed by evidence that he has successfully dented Mr Brown's reputation for economic competence, Mr Cameron turned his attention to the Prime Minister's most cherished social policy.

"His great passion has ended in great failure," he said.

Mr Brown has been criticised by Labour MPs over his decision to abolish the 10p rate of tax, which has left up to 5.3million low-paid workers worse off.

Mr Cameron's own attack on the Government's record was supported by a Tory policy paper entitled Making British Poverty History - a provocative echo of the Make Poverty History campaign endorsed by Mr Brown.

He said the Prime Minister had thrown cash at the problem, but had done nothing to tackle its underlying causes.

He also questioned Labour's boast that it has taken 600,000 children out of poverty.

He pointed out that the number of children living in impoverished households actually rose by 100,000 last year, and predicted the number would rise again.

He also seized on delays to the release of the latest batch of official statistics, which the Government blames on problems at the Office of National Statistics.

The figures had been expected last month, but were put back until May 2 - the day after polling in the

local and London elections - and then deferred to some time in June.

Government officials predicted the final figures would in fact show that child poverty went down again last year.

Scroll down for more...

But the Tories accused the Government of 'burying bad news' to avoid embarrassing Labour before the elections on Thursday.

Mr Cameron said: "This was the Government that promised social justice. But now, when you look at severe poverty, there are 600,000 more in severe poverty than a decade ago.

"The poorest people, if you look at the bottom 10 per cent of people in our country, have become poorer."

Regarding solutions, he said: 'We've got to understand the importance of families, of incentives to

work, and of communities in the fight against poverty.

"No more tinkers here or pulling of a small lever there, but deep-rooted, coherent, wholesale and concerted action against all those things that drive poverty in our country."

Mr Cameron said that, under the Prime Minister's leadership, four million children had left school without five good GCSEs, youth employment had risen, and nearly four million had debt problems.

But Labour accused Mr Cameron of opportunism and opposing its own targets to tackle poverty.

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell said: "We are taking the tough decisions to lift people out of poverty - radically reforming the benefits system to get more people into work and increasing tax credit and the minimum wage to make work pay."

Anti-poverty campaigners challenged Mr Cameron to set out in detail what he would do.

Hilary Fisher, director of the charity End Child Poverty, said: "At present the Conservative Party have only signed up to the aspiration of ending child poverty by 2020.

"David Cameron now needs to firmly commit his party to this important goal."