Gavin Shuker
Main Page: Gavin Shuker (Independent - Luton South)Department Debates - View all Gavin Shuker's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
3. What recent estimate he has made of the effect of fiscal policy on the level of child poverty.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
9. What recent estimate he has made of the effect of fiscal policy on the level of child poverty.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
11. What recent estimate he has made of the effect of fiscal policy on the level of child poverty.
Sajid Javid
The hon. Lady did a lot of good work with Citizens Advice before she came to this House, so I think she shares with me a genuine interest in child poverty. If that is the case, she will recognise that the existing measure for child poverty is flawed. It is based on relative incomes and it produces perverse results. For example, according to that measure, during the previous recession—Labour’s recession, the deepest in our post-war history—child poverty fell by 300,000. The hon. Lady knows that that cannot be right, so if she wants to work with me to help develop a measure that actually works, I would welcome that.
Gavin Shuker
Despite the Minister’s divisive rhetoric about benefits, two thirds of all children living in poverty have one or more parents in work, not out of work. Does he not accept that his inaction on prices and wages is not just hammering those young people but hammering the rest of us as well?
Sajid Javid
Work remains the best and the most immediate way out of poverty. The hon. Gentleman will be concerned that his constituency saw a 72% rise in unemployment during Labour’s last term in office. It has now fallen under this Government. He is rightly concerned about workless households, so he should welcome the fact that the number of children living in workless households is at an all-time low—the lowest since records began in 1996.