Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce child poverty in Bradford.

The Government is committed to our goal of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020.

The 2014-17 Child Poverty Strategy outlines our plans to tackle the root causes of poverty, including worklessness, low earnings and educational failure. This approach reflects the reality of child poverty in the UK today and is the only way to achieve lasting change to protect the poorest in society.

Under this Government, 300,000 fewer children are in relative income poverty, around 390,000 fewer children are growing up in workless families, the attainment gap for deprived pupils has narrowed, and we have recently seen the largest annual fall in unemployment on record.[1]

But central Government cannot, by itself, end child poverty. Where people live matters. This Government has taken action to give local areas more freedom to do what people want and need locally including by providing local data that helps users identify specific local challenges. Local Authorities are required to have their own local child poverty strategies.

Further information is outlined in the Child Poverty Strategy. Local data is also published in the child poverty basket of indicators.

Child Poverty Strategy: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-poverty-strategy-2014-to-2017

Child Poverty basket of indicators: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-poverty-basket-of-local-indicators

[1] Based on Labour Market Statistics published in October 2014. In June-August 2014, there were 538,000 fewer unemployed people compared to a year earlier.