Conservatives announced plans to abolish current system of targets, but amendment by bishop of Durham passes by by 290 votes to 198

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The House of Lords has voted to keep targets aimed at reducing child poverty, forcing the government to reconsider its plan to abolish them.

The bishop of Durham, supported by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, led the effort to retain the targets, which measure material poverty, and were set to be scrapped under the welfare reform and work bill.

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, announced the proposals in July, prompting dismay among child poverty charities.

He said the government would scrap its measurement of child poverty and the aim to eradicate it by 2020, while replacing it with a new duty to report levels of educational attainment, worklessness and addiction.

Under his plans, the old measurement, based on the percentage of households with below-average income, would continue to be published as a government statistic but would no longer be seen as a target.

However, peers voted by 290 to 198 to keep the targets, in a move to prompt the House of Commons to think again.

It is one of numerous defeats of the government in the House of Lords, where Labour and the Lib Dems outnumber the Conservatives.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Iain Duncan Smith announced in July that the government was to scrap child poverty targets. Photograph: Rex Shutterstock

Last year George Osborne performed a U-turn on his plans to cut tax credits after peers asked him to reconsider the plans.

Speaking in the House of Lords on Monday, the Right Rev Paul Butler, bishop of Durham, said he believed the targets were important as part of the monitoring of poverty in the UK.

He said the relative income measure had been criticised for showing a decline in poverty during the recession but it was important to measure that alongside other indicators – absolute poverty, deprivation and in-work poverty.

David Freud, the welfare minister, opposed the amendment on behalf of the government, saying “life chances” indicators were a better way of monitoring what was happening and of directing resources most effectively to tackle the problem.

The Lords vote was welcomed by the Child Poverty Action Group, whose chief executive, Alison Garnham, said it “showed how much of a mess the government has got itself into on poverty”.

She said: “It’s needed the House of Lords to act and insist that, yes, the government should continue to report to parliament on what’s happening to child poverty and, yes, that when you talk about poverty and life chances, you cannot simply ignore income.

“The Lords is on the side of the experts and the public here. MPs now have a chance to demonstrate their commitment to tackling child poverty by holding on to the Lords amendment when the bill comes back to them.”

The move to abolish the child poverty targets under Labour’s act was strongly criticised before Christmas by Alan Milburn, the former cabinet minister and head of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission.

“It has long been obvious that the existing child poverty targets are not going to be met,” the commission said at the time. “In fact they will be missed by a country mile. That is a matter of deep regret. A country that is the fifth richest in the world should not have 2.3 million children officially classified as poor.”