Written question asked by Patsy Calton (Liberal Democrat) on Thursday, 22 May 2003, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 5 June 2003. It was answered by Malcolm Wicks (Labour) on Thursday, 5 June 2003 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Dept for Work and Pensions

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress has been made in meeting his Department's targets on eliminating child poverty. - Including ref to Opportunity for all - Fourth Annual Report (Cm 5598) and Measuring child poverty: a consultation document.

Answer: Mrs. Calton: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what progress has been made in meeting his Department's targets on eliminating child poverty. [116383] Malcolm Wicks: Poverty is a complex and multi- dimensional problem. We published `Opportunity for all--Fourth Annual Report' (Cm 5598) in September 2002, which sets out the Government's strategy for tackling poverty and social exclusion and presents information on the indicators used to measure progress against this strategy. In April 2002 we published `Measuring child poverty: a consultation document' to gather views on an appropriate measure of child poverty for the long term. We published the preliminary conclusions of our consultation on 14 May 2003. Progress has been made on the Public Service Agreement target (PSA), shared by the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Treasury, to reduce the number of children in low-income households by at least a quarter by 2004. Data for this is published in `Households Below Average Income 1994/95 to 2001/ 02'. On this measure the number of children in low income fell by around half a million between 1996-97 and 2001/02. The baseline for the PSA target is 1998-99. We are making steady progress towards the target. The Public Service Agreement target technical note, available on the internet and in the library, contains full details of how the target will be monitored.

Secondary information