Charlie Elphicke
Main Page: Charlie Elphicke (Independent - Dover)Department Debates - View all Charlie Elphicke's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
What a delight it is to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Crausby.
I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who has secured an important debate. She made a passionate speech, in which she described eloquently the impact of poverty on her constituents. Because she has given us so many concrete stories about real people, I will give an overview and talk about the national picture. However, I remind the Minister that this is the second time in the space of a month that she has been asked about sanctions. We asked her to do a number of things about sanctions during a debate in the north-east, and to check what was going on. When she winds up the debate, I would like to know whether she has done those things.
During the previous Parliament, I was privileged to be the Minister who took the Child Poverty Act 2010 through Parliament. Because of the complexity of measuring child poverty, we had four measures: relative poverty, absolute poverty, persistent poverty, and combined low income and material deprivation. The Bill was passed with all-party agreement, and everybody agreed that we wanted to make progress on all those fronts. What has been the record? The record of the Labour Government between 1997 and 2010 was a reduction of 1.8 million in the number of children in absolute poverty. The record under this Government, according to the DWP’s own statistics, which the Minister published last summer—I hope that she is listening to this—is that the number of children living in absolute poverty has gone up by half a million.
The next measure is relative poverty. Between 1997 and 2010, the number of children living in relative poverty fell by 1.3 million. The number fell by 200,000 between 2009 and 2013, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts an increase of 400,000 by the time of the election in May. Government Members have to ask themselves why absolute poverty has increased and relative poverty has reduced. What is going on here? The explanation is this. The median income in this country has dropped by 8% under this Government, whereas the income of those in the poorest decile has dropped by 5%, so everybody is poorer; it is just that those at the bottom are not quite as much poorer as are those in the middle. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) can shake his head, but those are the figures that the Government published only in July, and the Government should think about that.
Mr David Crausby (in the Chair)
Order. A Parliamentary Private Secretary should be seen and not heard, Mr Elphicke.