The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Livermore on 2016-03-01.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to respond to the recommendations set out in the State of the Nation report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission published on 17 December 2015.
Lord Nash
The Government is grateful to the Commission for its wide-ranging and comprehensive report. We are committed to publishing a new Life Chances Strategy, and the Department for Work and Pensions is leading on this. That Strategy will set out a comprehensive plan to fight disadvantage and extend opportunity. It will focus on the root causes and human dimensions of child poverty. Our proposals in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill introduce a new duty for the Government to report annually on children in workless households and children’s educational attainment in England. This is because the evidence shows that educational attainment and worklessness are the most significant factors driving children’s life chances. The Strategy will also include a wider set of measures that look at the root causes of poverty, including family breakdown, problem debt and drug and alcohol dependency. These will drive real action to transform the lives of the most disadvantaged children and families.
The Government looks forward to working with the reformed Social Mobility Commission, which will continue to play a very important role in the drive to promote and increase social mobility in the years to come.