HC Deb 28 May 2004 vol 422 cc7-8W
Chris Ruane

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many children were living in poverty in each of the last 25 years; and what estimate he has made of how many children will be living in poverty in each of the next five years. [175004]

Mr. Pond

Poverty and social exclusion are complex and multi-dimensional issues, affecting many aspects of peoples' lives—including their living standards, health, housing, the quality of their environment and not just low income. "Opportunity for all—fifth annual report", published on 18 September 2003, contains an annex of indicators tracking the Government's performance on tackling poverty and social exclusion across a range of domains much wider than income alone—amounting to around 50 indicator in total, 15 of which are child specific.

Information showing the proportion and number of children living in low income households going back to 1979 can be found in the publication "Households Below Average Income 1994–95 to 2002–03".

Steady progress is being made towards the PSA target to reduce by a quarter the number of children living in low income households by 2004—05. Between 1998–99 and 2002–03 the number of children in low-income households fell by 600,000 after housing costs and by 500,000 before housing costs. The latest data do not include the effect of tax credits introduced in April 2003, nor do they include the increases announced in the 2003 pre-Budget report.

The document "Measuring child poverty", published in December 2003 outlines the Government's measure of UK child poverty for the long term. This new measure will begin from 2004–05 and will be used to monitor our progress towards meeting our goal of halving the number of children in poverty by 2010.

All publications listed are available in the Library.