ake up, 18-year-olds! The last Labour government may feel like ancient history, lost in the mists of time, but this week you may discover some of its legacy – and a jolting reminder of how different things were. As of September 2020, about 55,000 of you come into your child trust fund (CTF) endowment from those days, with a similar number set to benefit each month for the next eight years. This long forgotten echo down the years arrives as a timely political reminder of how life might have been if social democratic ideas had prevailed. Instead, you grew up in the lost decade of austerity that saw nurseries, Sure Start centres, schools, colleges, leisure centres, parks, benefits and every service to support your childhood depleted and stripped bare. Even the infant death rate rose for first time in generations. And, of course, the child trust fund was shut down, too. But it has left a cohort of 5.5 million lucky legatees born between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011. Each new baby was welcomed with a £250 savings voucher (it was £500 for families on tax credits). Those born between 1 September 2002 and 31 July 2003 had their accounts topped up with the same again at the age of seven, and families were encouraged to add in extra over the years. With many accounts forgotten, some 18-year-olds don’t know they are due a windfall, with even less notion of the reason why – but the accounts are all safe and can be traced at the government gateway service or via the charity the Share Foundation. The CTF was an inspired idea: far-sighted and socially ambitious. Since no money arrived for 18 years, here was a policy beyond the electoral cycle. It wasn’t a pre-election bribe. Having pledged to “end child poverty” by 2020, Labour had taken a million children above the poverty threshold by 2010. But poverty is more than a lack of income. The earnings divide soared in the 1980s, but has more or less plateaued since. The gap in wealth, however, has continued to widen. Researchers turned to looking at how a small cushion of security could make a big difference in life chances. Here was wealth redistribution, albeit on a small and tentative scale. Gavin Kelly, its creator, now chair of the Resolution Foundation, says Labour would have added more over the years. As it is, during its eight years the scheme cost the state a total of just £3.3bn. There is now £9bn locked up in these accounts, trebled by interest, share price growth and parental contributions. Those from low-income families who added no extra will be due on average about £1,200. Well-off families who topped up to the maximum could have brought some 18-year-olds’ funds up to as much as £70,000, so this is hardly a wealth equaliser. But it’s all too easy for those with a safety net of savings to underestimate the paralysing effect of having nothing at all. For sociologists, here is the dream test-bed, a chance to compare last year’s 18-year-olds who had no nest egg with the next few years of cohorts who can use their trust fund when they turn 18 or later. The LSE’s Abigail McKnight is gathering funding for definitive research to show beyond doubt how assets affect young people’s lives. But she has already researched the effect of even small sums. Here’s her finding: “Early asset holding does have positive effects on later wages, employment prospects, excellent general health and in reducing malaise.” How? She says it allows young people to take risks, “and risk-taking is very important, for higher returns in later life”. If forced to take the first bad job they can find, unable to afford work experience or switch jobs for fear of unemployment, prevented from moving to where better jobs might be or buying a car to get to work, or starting a business in a small way, they can be stuck for life. “An asset can give them peace of mind to dare to try for something better.” While many saw the child trust fund as a warm welcome to every baby citizen, it had powerful enemies, including those who oppose any universal state benefit as wasteful. The Liberal Democrats picked on it as a totemic cut to put into their 2010 manifesto to suggest the Labour government was squandering money. So when George Osborne set about slashing and burning in his first 2010 budget, here was an easy kill. In the coalition government, the Lib Dem David Laws was chief secretary to the Treasury and he not only acquiesced but loudly castigated the CTF with a thoroughly Tory austerian claim that it “deceived” people by handing out funds from borrowed money. Abolishing it saved £320m a year, with a small face-saver of using £20m for much needed respite care for disabled children. Here is a sad tale of good social policy trashed, and a reminder to all 18-year-olds that better, kinder government is possible.