Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Office for National Statistics report on the levels of (1) persistent, and (2) overall, poverty rates in the United Kingdom, what new actions they intend to take to eradicate poverty and the causes of poverty in this Parliament.

This Government’s welfare reforms are focused on supporting people to find and keep work whilst ensuring that we are protecting the most vulnerable. At the end of the Parliament we will be spending over £60bn – 3% of GDP – supporting people on low incomes.

We know that work is the best route out of poverty. Evidence shows that almost three-quarters of poor workless families who found full employment escaped poverty; and that the highest poverty exit rate of 75% was for families that moved from part to full employment. The number of children living in workless households is down by 449,000 since 2010

Our new life chances approach to poverty and disadvantage will include a set of indicators to measure progress in tackling the root causes of poverty such as worklessness, educational attainment and family stability.