Child Poverty Bill
12:00 pm
Kate Green: I think it is unfair to say that Government policy to date has dealt only with people just below the poverty line. In fact, I think I am right in saying that there have been improvements on income across all income deciles. Some policies have been increasingly directed at those who are at greater risk of poverty, although I think that there is more to do.
I think the advantage of measuring persistent poverty is that that gets to a group of families who suffer significant disadvantage. Particularly, it gets at some of the instability that persistent poverty causes for family incomes. That includes them moving in and out of poverty; they are out of poverty for short periods, but there are long periods when they are plunged back in again. I think we would be interested in measuring, over a period of time, children who spend most of their time below the poverty line, and I think that would be a useful way of getting to a number of the at-risk groups that we are concerned about.