Child Poverty Act 2010

{{Infobox UK legislation

| short_title = Child Poverty Act 2010

| type = Act

| parliament = Parliament of the United Kingdom

| long_title = An Act to set targets relating to the eradication of child poverty, and to make other provision about child poverty

| statute_book_chapter = 2010 c. 9

| introduced_by = Stephen Timms and Lord McKenzie of Luton{{cite web|url=http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/childpoverty.html |title=Bills before Parliament |access-date=28 May 2010 |publisher=UK Parliament |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100210072848/http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/childpoverty.html |archive-date=10 February 2010 }}

| territorial_extent = England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

| royal_assent = 25 March 2010

| commencement = 25 March 2010 (all provisions except Part 2 and section 26)
25 May 2010 (part 2 and section 26)

| repeal_date =

| amendments =

| related_legislation =

| repealing_legislation =

| status = Amended

| original_text = [https://web.archive.org/web/20100423150854/http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2010/ukpga_20100009_en_1]

| use_new_UK-LEG = yes

| legislation_history = https://web.archive.org/web/20100210072848/http://services.parliament.uk:80/bills/2009-10/childpoverty.html

}}

The Child Poverty Act 2010 (c. 9) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom "to set targets relating to the eradication of child poverty, and to make other provision about child poverty".{{Cite web|url=https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmbills/112/09112.1-7.html|title = Child Poverty Bill}} More specifically, the act has been summarised as comprising "a new set of legal duties for the [UK] government of the day to take action to meet four income targets for ending child poverty by 2020 and to minimise 'socio-economic disadvantage' for children."{{harvnb|Bamfield|2012|p=831}}

The four income targets all related to median UK household income, and were as follows:

Measure	Target
class="wikitable"
Relative low income	Less than 10% of children living in households with an income below 60% of the 2020 median{{refn\|group=nb\|10% as opposed to the 5% absolute low income target, taking into account that by 2020 the median could have moved upwards, making a target related to the median more challenging to reach.}}
Combined low income and material deprivation	Less than 5% of children living in households with both (a) an income below 70% of the 2020 median, and (b) material deprivation (i.e. the inability to afford goods and activities typical in UK society)
Absolute low income	Less than 5% of children living in households with an income below 60% of the 2010 median{{refn\|group=nb\|Taking into account any change to the value of UK money between 2010 and 2020 (i.e. inflation).}}
Persistent poverty	Less than 7% of children living in households with an income below 60% of the median in the given year for at least three out of a four-year period{{refn\|group=nb\|Target proposed following a consultation that ended in August 2014.}}

Background

The act provided a statutory basis to the commitment made by Tony Blair's Labour Government in 1999 to eradicate child poverty by 2020, which the Conservatives in Opposition under David Cameron had accepted as a "shared goal" ("an aspiration, not a pledge") in 2006.{{cite news|last=Letwin|first=Oliver|title=Why we have signed up to Labour's anti-poverty target|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/apr/11/comment.politics2|access-date=30 October 2019|work=Guardian|date=11 April 2006}} The proposed legislation was first read as the Child Poverty Bill in June 2009.{{Cite web|url=https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/childpoverty.html|title=Child Poverty Act 2010 - Parliamentary Bills - UK Parliament}} Its sponsors were Labour politicians Stephen Timms, then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and Bill McKenzie.

In its comprehensive, ambitious scope and focus on poorer children, the Act has been compared to educational proposals made in Australia over a similar timeframe by the 2011 Gonski Report.{{harvnb|Maslen|2019|pp=599–600}}

Other provisions

=Child Poverty Commission=

Chapter 9, section 8 of the Act required the establishment of an independent Child Poverty Commission to oversee progress towards the targets, which via the Welfare Reform Act 2012 became the Child Poverty and Social Mobility Commission.{{Cite legislation UK|type=act|year=2010|chapter=9|url=http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/9/part/1/crossheading/the-child-poverty-commission/enacted|act=Child Poverty Act 2010|accessdate=28 October 2019|date=25 March 2010}} This section of the Act was later revised by chapter 7, section 6 of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, which renamed the body as the Social Mobility Commission.{{Cite legislation UK|type=act|year=2016|chapter=7|url=http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/9/part/A1/crossheading/social-mobility-commission|act=Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016|accessdate=28 October 2019|date=16 May 2016}}

Criticism

The act received Royal Assent on 25 March 2010, six weeks before the 2010 general election which brought to an end 13 years of Labour government. A paper published in the Political Quarterly in 2012 described it as "[o]ne of Labour's parting shots before leaving office": "Although passed with cross-party support, the Child Poverty Act 2010 was clearly something of a [https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/stitch-up stitch up], intended to embarrass an incoming government if it tried to shirk its commitments or move the goal posts."{{harvnb|Bamfield|2012|pp=831–832}}

As noted by the politically independent but Conservative-leaning think tank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) in 2016, the targets had been deliberately envisaged as being impossible to delay or quietly lay aside.{{cite web |url=https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/core/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Child-Poverty-2020.pdf|title=Reforming the Child Poverty Act|website=Centre for Social Justice}} In a meeting with the Work and Pensions Select Committee in June 2009, Timms had explained: "In the way the Bill has been drafted, the commitment to hit those four targets is binding by 2020. [...T]he only way to avert the possibility of a judicial review forcing a future government to take whatever steps are needed to hit the target would be for the legislation to be repealed." Timms further explained how this differed from the Climate Change Act 2008, as "with the Climate Change Act, there is there a mechanism to delay the target or to recognise that economic circumstances might make it impossible to deliver that. That provision is not in this Bill."{{Cite web|url=https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmworpen/702/9061702.htm|title=House of Commons - Work and Pensions Committee - Minutes of Evidence}}

Abandonment

It became clear to Parliament with the 2012/13 child poverty data that "under any plausible scenario, the [act's] 2020 targets will be missed".{{Cite web|url=https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/key-issues-parliament-2015/social-protection/child-poverty/|title=Child poverty}} 2013 was a turning point due to a renewed rise in middle incomes after the Great Recession while incomes continued to fall at the bottom, rising pensioner poverty, and rising poverty among social housing tenants.{{Cite web|url=https://www.npi.org.uk/publications/income-and-poverty/what-happened-poverty-under-coalition/|title = What happened to poverty under the Coalition?}}

The targets were formally abandoned on 1 July 2015 when the Department for Work and Pensions and the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith (one of the CSJ's co-founders) announced "a new and strengthened approach to tracking the life chances of Britain’s most disadvantaged children".{{Cite web|last=HM Government|url=https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-strengthen-child-poverty-measure|title=Government to strengthen child poverty measure|date=1 July 2015|access-date=30 October 2019}}

The act was not formally repealed. However, the announcement was liveblogged under the title "Iain Duncan Smith announces Child Poverty Act being scrapped" in the Guardian.{{cite news|last=Sparrow|first=Andrew|title=Iain Duncan Smith announces Child Poverty Act being scrapped - Politics live|url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2015/jul/01/reaction-as-davies-report-says-new-runway-should-be-at-heathrow-politics-live|access-date=30 October 2019|work=Guardian|date=1 July 2015}}

References

=Notes=

=Bibliography=

{{cite journal|last=Bamfield|first=Louise|title=Child Poverty and Social Mobility: Taking the Measure of the Coalition's 'New Approach'|journal=Political Quarterly|volume=83|issue=4|year=2012|pages=830–837|doi=10.1111/j.1467-923x.2012.02418.x}}

{{cite journal|last=Maslen|first=Joseph|title=Cracking the Code: The Social Mobility Commission and Education Policy Discourse|journal=Journal of Education Policy|volume=34|issue=5|year=2019|pages=599–612|doi=10.1080/02680939.2018.1449891|s2cid=149726651|url=https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2418/1/Maslen%202018a.doc|access-date=3 September 2020|archive-date=12 July 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210712144939/https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2418/1/Maslen%202018a.doc|url-status=dead|url-access=subscription}}{{Cite journal|url=https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2418|title=Accepted manuscript|journal=Journal of Education Policy|date=5 April 2018|pages=1–14|publisher=Institutional open access repository|access-date=21 October 2019|last1=Maslen|first1=Joseph|archive-date=12 July 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210712144912/https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2418/|url-status=dead}}

Category:United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 2010

Category:Child poverty

Category:Poverty in the United Kingdom

Category:Children's rights legislation in the United Kingdom