Business of the House

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s concern for his constituents, but one of the conditions for entitlement to disability living allowance, as he will know, is that a claimant must have been present in the country for two of the past three years. He will understand that all decisions on benefit claims must be made in accordance with the relevant legislation, but if he provides further details I will ask the Department for Work and Pensions to look into the matter.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has curiously contested the fact that child poverty had risen, saying he was not happy

“with the measure. I think we need a better measure.”—[Official Report, 29 January 2014; Vol. 574, c. 859.]

Will the Leader of the House allow a debate in Government time to discuss what the Government propose to do about the escalating problem of child poverty, other than fiddling the figures?

[Mr Lansley]

The House will recall that the Prime Minister said that the data the previous Government used to measure child poverty related to relative poverty and that, on that measure, it has come down. The figures for 2011-12, the latest period for which data are available, show the number of children in relative poverty to be 2.3 million, a fall of 300,000 from 2009-10, when the figure was 2.6 million. The latest data from this Parliament show that the number of children in relative poverty has fallen by 300,000.