Child poverty duty to become law
Ministers have announced plans to introduce a bill, which will make it a legal duty for the government, local authorities and other organisations to help to end child poverty across the UK.
The goal of eradicating child poverty by 2020 was set by Tony Blair, but the government looks set to miss its interim target of halving (relative) child poverty by 2010. An estimated 2.9 million children currently live below the poverty line in the UK.
Under the Child Poverty Bill, a legal duty to work together to support families to end child poverty will be placed on central government, councils and services including the police, NHS primary care trusts and youth offending agencies. It requires the Westminster government to publish a UK-wide child poverty strategy, which must be revised every three years. It also puts an equivalent duty on Scottish and Northern Irish ministers.
Read more of the story at BBC News Online
Read the response of End Child Poverty Campaign and Child Poverty Action Group
Find out about child poverty in London
Posted on 19 June 2009
Further pages
- Huge fall in building of new affordable homes
- 'High pay at the top corrosive to the British economy'
- Average incomes rising much less than inflation
- Welfare reform risks 133,000 unable to afford rent
- Pay gap grows between top and middle earners
- GLA publishes child poverty update
- Public education spending to fall at fastest rate since 1950s
- FTSE 100 directors' pay up by 50%
- LSE to monitor poverty and inequality under the Coalition
- Is London the hardest region for poor children?
- Housing costs risk piling pressure on Outer London services
- New London's Poverty Profile launched
- Decade of rising poverty predicted
- Government housing policies assessed
- Childcare costs causing debt and poverty
- Pay and rewards risen faster at the top
- Mixed results on employment retention
- '1 in 4 London children overcrowded'
- Public support for tackling pay inequality
- Living costs rising faster for families
- 'Single mothers hit hardest by welfare changes'
- Disabled people 'face additional debt difficulties'
- Will the Work Programme fail the most disadvantaged?
- Incomes grew in 2009-2010 but future looks gloomy
- Poor 'experience worse inflation'
- London's Latin American community low-paid and exploited
- Child Poverty Action Group issues legal challenge to Government
- Women still behind in London's economy
- Government consults on new child poverty approach
- IFS predicts rising poverty
- London's poor hit harder by tax and benefit changes
- New information on rough sleeping
- In-work poverty on the rise in London
- Recession impacts most on East and Outer London
- New data available on London's debt
- New report on lifting families out of poverty
- London's public sector exhibits lower standards of living
- Public funding cuts hit the poorest hardest
- City Parochial becomes Trust for London
- VAT rise will hit the poor hardest
- Mayor announces increase in Living Wage
- London the 'most unequal city in the West', says academic
- New National Minimum Wage rates announced
- 'Worklessness costs London £5bn a year'
- Bus fare rise hits low-paid Londoners
- London's children in deepest poverty
- JRF launches housing and neighbourhood website
- Poverty in Hammersmith
- Focus on London 2009 published
- London Child Poverty Awards
- Recession poverty risk for BME Women
- Government reviews impact of recession
- Londoners face debt crisis
- Child poverty duty to become law
- London Living Wage increases
- London's Poverty Profile welcomed
- London's Poverty Profile launched
- New research about Latin American community in London
- Income inequality hit record high before the recession started
- London's economic environment remains harsh, says GLA
- Government will miss 2010 child poverty target
- Unemployment up across all London boroughs