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| Child poverty definition is changed | Child poverty definition is changed |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has announced a new way of measuring child poverty. | Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has announced a new way of measuring child poverty. |
| Mr Duncan Smith said the new system would focus on the "root causes" of poverty and make a "meaningful change to children's life chances". | |
| It will include factors such as educational achievement and living in workless households as well as income. | |
| It follows a report claiming child poverty levels were "unacceptably high" across the UK. | |
| The four UK children's commissioners, for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, urged the government to halt its programme of benefit cuts. | |
| The DWP said it would scrap the measure of child poverty and targets introduced by Labour in 2010. | |
| A child is currently defined as being in poverty when living in a household with an income below 60% of the UK's average. | |
| A spokesman said: "The current child poverty measure - defined as 60% of median income - is considered to be deeply flawed and a poor test of whether children's lives are genuinely improving." | |
| It added: "The government will bring forward legislation to correct that with new measures focused on levels of work within a family and improvements in education attainment, two key areas in terms of improving social mobility." | It added: "The government will bring forward legislation to correct that with new measures focused on levels of work within a family and improvements in education attainment, two key areas in terms of improving social mobility." |
| Speaking in the Commons, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the existing framework was "flawed", overly simplistic, and "obsessed by targets", resulting in the skewing of resources and outcomes. | |
| 'New measures' | |
| New legislation, he said, would introduce a "statutory duty to report on worklessness and levels of educational attainment", focused on levels of worklessless, long-term workless households and GCSE attainment for all pupils. | |
| The government will develop a range of other indicators to measure other causes of poverty, including family breakdown, debt and drug and alcohol dependency, reporting annually on how these indicators affect life chances. | |
| But Labour said the announcement was the "obituary for compassionate conservatism" and the Child Poverty Act which underpinned the existing framework had all party support when it was passed in 2010. | |
| Its spokesman Stephen Timms said the government should be "attacking low pay rather than attacking the low paid". | |
| However, Labour MP Frank Field, who chairs the commons work and pensions select committee, said it was a "welcome start". | |
| "We mustn't flit around with general aspirations about educational attainment when we know life chances are determined before children enter school," he said. | |
| "So the measure therefore must look at whether we are equalising life opportunities for the poorest children before they reach school, and that definition will then drive policy to achieve those objectives." | |
| Last month it was revealed that the number of UK children classed as living in relative poverty remains 2.3 million. | |
| The Department for Work and Pensions annual estimate shows the proportion affected - almost one in six - was unchanged from 2011-12 to 2013-14. |