Welfare Reform and Work Bill (First sitting)

Anna Turley Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Hannah Bardell]

Q 27 Following on from that, the Child Poverty Commission warned in 2014 that there was no realistic hope of meeting the targets that were already set, and that was before the cuts that were proposed in this Bill. Is there not a grave risk that, if we remove those targets, we will have no way of understanding the real impact of the cuts, at a stage when we are not meeting the targets previously set?

Neera Sharma: Yes, I agree. I think that is why it is vital to keep the provisions of the Child Poverty Act as they are, because they do set targets for Government. They set measures, but they also enable a strategy to be produced that can look at how we can tackle child poverty and children’s life chances over a longer period.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q 28 We know that we have high levels of poverty in working families, and the most recent statistics from DWP show that 64% of children growing up in poverty have at least one working parent. Given that, are you concerned that reporting solely on children who are in workless families will not give a true picture of child poverty in the UK?

Neera Sharma: Yes, Barnardo’s is very concerned. We should also report on children who are growing up in working families. That is why it is imperative that an income measure is retained.

[Corri Wilson]

Q 29 To follow on from what Hannah was saying, given that the child poverty targets were unlikely to have been met, would it have been better to delay the targets instead of removing them?

Neera Sharma: Yes, the Government could have taken the opportunity to look at the timing and set interim measures and looked at the direction into the future instead of looking at abolishing them completely.