Child Poverty

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to build on the reduction in child poverty in 2009–10 reported in Households Below Average Income, published on 12 May.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, I welcome the reduction in child poverty from 2.8 million to 2.6 million children, but despite £150 billion spent on tax credits since 2003-04, largely aimed at families, that figure is a long way off the previous Government’s aim of halving child poverty by 2010. Noble Lords will be aware that the Government published their child poverty strategy on 5 April, showing how our radical reform programme will help to transform people’s lives and break cycles of disadvantage.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and I welcome the Government’s commitment to the eradication of child poverty. However, given that improved financial support for children played a key role in the previous Government’s achievement in reducing child poverty to its lowest level since 1985, will he comment on the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ prediction that cuts in such support could contribute to an increase in child poverty? Will he also explain why the child poverty strategy contains no specific, quantified targets for the period that it covers?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, that is a complicated question. As noble Lords know, fundamentally, child poverty has been stuck at the same level since around 2004-05. We have seen a statistically significant reduction this year, but it is very much the same figure as it was five years ago. The IFS, as the noble Baroness pointed out, predicts an increase of 200,000 in the number of children in poverty in two or three years’ time. That may or may not be true, but our fundamental reforms, particularly of the universal credit, will start to drive that figure down. We are predicting, as has already been announced, 350,000 fewer children in poverty as a result of the universal credit when it is introduced and 300,000 fewer workless families.