Child Poverty Bill
12:00 pm
Neera Sharma: The Bill states that the measure for the eradication of relative poverty is below 10 per cent. We believe that 10 per cent. would still leave 1.3 million children—one in 10—living in poverty. That measure is not challenging or ambitious enough, and it is likely that those children most at risk of poverty, such as disabled children and some black and minority ethnic children, will still remain poor under that 10 per cent. measure. When the Government made a commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020, they stated that that would be the best in Europe. However, the best in Europe at the time was a level of 5 per cent., in Demark and Finland. We would prefer a more challenging measure of 5 per cent., rather than 10 per cent.