The purpose of the Bill is to:

Give new impetus to Government’s commitment and ensure a focus across government on ending child poverty for the long term.

The main elements of the Bill are:

• Defining success in eradicating child poverty by establishing four UK-wide income targets to be met by 2020
• Requiring the Secretary of State to publish a UK child poverty strategy, setting out how targets will be met and to publish annual progress reports
• Establishing a Child Poverty Commission to provide advice on the development of the child poverty strategies
• Placing duties on local authorities and other delivery partners to work together to tackle child poverty

The main benefits of the Bill are:

Eradicating child poverty requires a renewed approach that makes sustainable progress in improving children’s life chances for the longer term. The Child Poverty Bill will enshrine in law the commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020 and help to ensure that we stay on course and take action now to tackle the causes as well as the consequences of poverty.

The Government has made substantial progress in halting and reversing the rising trend of child poverty, with 600,000 children lifted out of relative income poverty since 1998/99. Taken together, measures announced since Budget 2007 will lift around 500,000 children out of poverty.

PBR announced that Government will:

• bring forward its commitment to increase the child element of the Child Tax Credit by £25 above indexation in April 2010 to April 2009. The child element will therefore increase by £75 above indexation to £2,235;
• bring forward its commitment to increase Child Benefit from £18.80 to £20pw for the first child, and from £12.55 to £13.20pw for subsequent children to January 2009;

Budget 2008 announced an additional £125 million across the UK for pilots to develop new methods of tacking child poverty.

The Government is determined to address long term child poverty, and set out its approach in Ending Child Poverty: Everybody’s Business, published in March 2008.