Public Sector: Pay
(asked on 21st February 2018) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the effect of the public sector pay cap on child poverty in (a) Newcastle, (b) the North East and (c) the UK since the imposition of that cap.
Wider social and economic factors make it impossible to isolate, with any certainty, the impacts of the public sector pay cap on the rates of children in low income. This is particularly the case when isolating these impacts at a regional and constituency level.
Latest estimates for children in low income in the UK and latest 3 year estimates for children in low income in the North East region are available in the Households below average income publication. Data is not available below regional level in this publication because the survey sample sizes are too small to support the production of robust estimates at this geography.
From this publication the absolute low income measure tracks low incomes against a threshold which moves with the rate of inflation. In 2015/16, the number of children living in absolute low income (before housing costs) has fallen by 2 percentage points since 2009/10. In the 3 years to 2015/16, the rate of children living in absolute low income (before housing costs) in the North East region has fallen by 7 percentage points, compared to the 3 years to 2009/10.