Child Poverty Bill
12:00 pm
Charlotte Pickles: I think that they haven’t reached the target for many reasons that we have discussed today, and there hasn’t been enough focus on getting workless households into work. Instead, there has been a greater focus on getting second earners in a home. We know that those living in severe poverty are much more likely to be in workless households. Also, if we look at which children are in poverty, around half of them are actually living in couple households where there is at least one person who works, so dealing with the couple penalty would go some way towards dealing with that issue. Another reason is that there has been a focus on shifting people from just under to just over 60 per cent. of median income, and if you look at the statistics and the figures, there are more people—more families—living in severe poverty today than in 1997.