At this stage in the cuts, no one can expect much in the way of compassion from the government. All the same, it takes a distinguished brand of heartlessness to pick Christmas as the moment to announce that the Department for Education will be cutting all its funding for the book-giving programmes run by Booktrust. In a couple of days, children will be unwrapping thoughtfully chosen picture books and paperbacks given by friends and family, but right now the government is crippling a charity that has done great work to bring the power and the pleasure of literacy to children from all backgrounds. Ed Miliband was right to accuse the government of knowing "the price of everything and the value of nothing" when it cut the funding for the scheme.

Bookstart (aimed at preschoolers), Booked Up (which lets children of secondary school age choose a free book) and Booktime (a complementary scheme to encourage parents and children to read together) are all funded by a combination of public and private money: with the £13m Booktrust receives from the government, it's able to generate another £56m value in funding from partners in the publishing industry (figures supplied by Booktrust). That's more than a 400% return on investment, which ought to look like good value to anyone – but not the government of brave new austerity Britain. "In these difficult economic times, ministers have to take tough decisions on spending," drones the brief statement from the DfE.

It's a wearying repetition of the cuts vocabulary that suggests that whoever is in charge of departmental communications could do with receiving a book, just so they've got some literary influences apart from the collected speeches of David Cameron. But Bookstart and its fellows have done much more than just draw down cash. By putting books into children's hands, these programmes give kids a brilliant start to a life of learning. According to Booktrust's own summary of research, families that benefit from the Bookstart programme are more likely to buy books and spend more time sharing them; they use their libraries more, and the children are better prepared for starting school.

Just owning books isn't enough to make you cleverer, of course, but Bookstart comes with two important messages: for parents, that reading with children is a vital and pleasurable thing to do (easily forgotten at the end of another hectic, screaming bedtime); and, for children, that books belong to them. For children in less educated households, where reading and sharing books is unlikely to be a priority, that's something that could be life-changing.

When I was a young and very poor mum, the Bookstart edition of This Little Baby (a gorgeously simple and engaging board book for toddlers) was a favourite for me and my son: every time we came to the surprise mirror ending, he would grin hugely at his own reflection and lean down to hug the book. At my next-door neighbour's, with her two children under two, This Little Baby was practically the only book in their living room. And the difference between no books and the two or three books provided by Bookstart strikes me as vast: it's the difference between seeing books as something special and separate that only belongs to other people, and as something you can own, chew, bash about and (yes) read.

Book-giving is another small redress to the influence of parental wealth on education that the government has deemed superfluous, along with the EMA for supporting low-income children in education above the age of 16, while money is somehow found for the great free school experiment. Booktrust will, I hope, be able to secure replacement funding for the suddenly withdrawn DfE money. But, even if the schemes continue, we should remember that this government was happy to kill it off, because this government would rather scrape back a lousy £13m (out of an annual budget of £57.6bn) than let that money be invested in turning small children into big readers.