§ Mrs. CaltonTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what progress has been made in meeting his Department's targets on eliminating child poverty. [116383]
§ Malcolm WicksPoverty is a complex and multidimensional problem. We published 'Opportunity for all—Fourth Annual Report' (Cm 5598) in September 2002, which sets out the Government's strategy for544W tackling poverty arid social exclusion and presents information on the indicators used to measure progress against this strategy.
In April 2002 we published 'Measuring child poverty: a consultation document' to gather views on an appropriate measure of child poverty for the long term. We published the preliminary conclusions of our consultation on 14 May 2003.
Progress has been made on the Public Service Agreement (PSA) target, shared by the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Treasury, to reduce the number of children in low-income households by at least a quarter by 2004. Data for this are published in `Households Below Average Income 1994/95 to 2001/ 02'. On this measure the number of children in low income fell by around half a million between 1996–97 and 2001/02. The baseline for the PSA target is 1998–99. We are making steady progress towards the target.
The Public Service Agreement target technical note, available on the internet and in the library, contains full details of how the target will be monitored.