{"id":7564,"date":"2016-02-02T12:01:36","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T12:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=7564"},"modified":"2016-02-02T12:01:36","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T12:01:36","slug":"win-for-vulnerable-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=7564","title":{"rendered":"Win for vulnerable children"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week (25 January) the House of Lords voted by 290 to 198 to keep child poverty targets the same, forcing the government to rethink its plans to abolish them.<\/p>\n

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Back in July, work and pensions secretary, Ian Duncan Smith, announced plans to scrap household income as a measurement of child poverty.<\/p>\n

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Instead of maintaining a target set by the last Labour government to eliminate child poverty by 2020, they instead intended to change the definition of poverty altogether, as UniteLIVE reported in December. <\/a><\/p>\n

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The current measurement is based on the percentage of households with below average income.<\/p>\n

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Under Ian Duncan Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proposed plan, this would no longer have been a target. Instead it would be substituted by a new duty to report levels of educational attainment, worklessness and addiction.<\/p>\n

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It was a plan that had left child poverty charities shocked and dismayed.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis government knew they would not meet the targets for cutting child poverty \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so they decided to simply stop measuring poverty, rather than tackle it,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner.<\/p>\n

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Rebecca Stephens, a mother of two who argued that the new \u00e2\u20ac\u015blife chances\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 indicators would mean children like hers would fall through the cracks, started a petition<\/a> against the governments planned changes, which reached more than 50,500 signatures.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAnyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been there knows that poverty is mainly about a lack of money,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she said.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt would have been ridiculous to have child poverty measures that ignore that,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she added.<\/p>\n

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Rebecca sent her petition in conjunction with Child Poverty Action group to the House of Lords and it was mentioned in the debate last Monday.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf the Lords\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 amendment becomes law, we will see how the government was trying to cover up substantially missing its own targets and failing to tackle child poverty,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Rebecca.<\/p>\n

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The governments\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 attack on children is just one of many of its wrongdoings against hardworking and low wage families from the National Living Wage, which is no living wage at all to the Trade Union Bill, which will silence the voice of working people.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bChanging the definition of poverty will do nothing to change the situation for the millions of children and their families living in poverty,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Turner<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bRather than sweeping it under the carpet we need measures that tackle poverty \u00e2\u20ac\u201c creating decent work for all, building proper housing for social rent and ending the cuts to benefits,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Debate on child poverty measures will now be returned to the House of Commons later this year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week (25 January) the House of Lords voted by 290 to 198 to keep child poverty targets the same, forcing the government to rethink its plans to abolish them.   Back in July, work and pensions secretary, Ian Duncan Smith, announced plans to scrap household income as a measurement of child poverty.   Instead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[480,174],"wps_subtitle":"Lords vote forces possible U-turn on child poverty","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7565,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564\/revisions\/7565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}