Child Poverty Bill

Part of the debate – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:00 pm on 22 October 2009.

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Photo of Karen Buck Karen Buck Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North 12:00, 22 October 2009

Quite a few of the discussions in the last few hours in the Committee have been about people at risk of being in poverty, aspects of family breakdown and all the things that are potentially—depending on which perspective you are coming from—drivers of poverty. Policy has frequently chosen to target resources and policy prescriptions on particular characteristics, family structures and risks of falling into poverty. There might well be an argument for that, but it would be interesting to know your perspective on whether, when one is trying to reduce that number of 2.9 million children currently living in poverty, the right way to do it is to say that we need to worry in particular about lone parents, couples or large families, or whether it is actually simply better to stick with the income indicator targets that are on the face of the Bill?