Iain Duncan Smith has said he will replace the existing Child Poverty Act with new measures based on our analysis of its root causes.
The Government’s plans put the CSJ’s pathways to poverty at the heart of new legislation, and in announcing the change Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, cited the CSJ’s Breakthrough Britain report.
New legislation to replace the Child Poverty Act 2010 will use worklessness and educational attainment as indicators of root causes of poverty, as well as a range of other measures and indicators, including family breakdown, debt and addiction.
This move comes days after the CSJ released a report calling on the ‘unrealistic, narrow and naïve’ child poverty targets to be overhauled. In Reforming the Child Poverty Act, the CSJ outlined why the current legislation has failed to improve outcomes for the most vulnerable in society and would lead to ‘legal chaos’ for the Government. That report built on others we have published in recent years.
The Child Poverty Act 2010, introduced by the last Labour Government, requires policymakers to reduce income inequality for households with children according to a set target. The legislation classifies those with household earnings of less than 60 per cent of the average (median) income as being in poverty.
The CSJ report called the measures ‘arbitrary and erratic’ and outlined their failure to take account of rising living standards over the past decades. By this relative measure, households can have been deemed to move into poverty without their circumstances changing.
The CSJ recommended the complete removal of all binding legislation, which it says has demonstrably failed. It suggested the Government should be forced to report annually on a series of key criteria and outline their plans to make improvements. These criteria include levels of employment, families earning less than the living wage, educational attainment of children in poorer households and levels of alcohol and drug abuse.
The Government will now use these criteria in its new measurements.
The CSJ’s influence in the Government’s consideration for changing the measure was cited in The Times and the Daily Mail.
The CSJ’s Policy Director Alex Burghart appeared on Newsnight to discuss the proposals. He also wrote a blog for the Spectator on the Government’s decision.
CSJ Director Christian Guy appeared on Sky News and BBC London and Dr Samantha Callan wrote on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog.