Child Poverty

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I confirm that we fully intend to implement the Conservative manifesto pledge, which states:

“We will work to eliminate child poverty and introduce better measures to drive real change in children’s lives, by recognising the root causes of poverty: entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, problem debt, and drug and alcohol dependency”.

This is something that we will certainly be tackling.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will of course be aware that many children are still being born into poverty and that their lives will be blighted through disadvantage. Would she be prepared to discuss with some of us some of the problems that are currently arising?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble and learned Baroness is absolutely right. This is extremely important and I would be very happy to meet her and others to discuss it. However, we must remember that work is the single most important route out of poverty. That is why we are extremely proud that, since 2010, 2 million more people are in work. We are also helping people to get back to work through the Work Programme. We are focused on tackling the root causes of poverty.