Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith had wanted to scrap child poverty targets that use annual data based on the percentage of households below-average income as a measurement for child poverty.
Ministers believe that ‘life chances’ indicators such as long-term unemployment are more important than income measures.
The Government’s reforms to the 2010 Child Poverty Act, which is to be renamed the Life Chances Act, have passed in the House of Commons.
But on Monday night the House of Lords, led by the Bishop of Durham, Rt Rev Paul Butler, voted down measures in the welfare reform and work bill to scrap the statutory duty to measure and report on income-based poverty and the aim of ending child poverty by 2020.
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