Child Poverty Act 2010
Public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Child Poverty Act 2010 (c. 9), later amended to Life Chances Act 2010, is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom "to set targets relating to the eradication of child poverty, and to make other provision about child poverty". More specifically, the act has been summarised as comprising "a new set of legal duties for the [UK] government of the day to take action to meet four income targets for ending child poverty by 2020 and to minimise 'socio-economic disadvantage' for children."
The four income targets all related to median UK household income, and were as follows:
Background
The act provided a statutory basis to the commitment made by Tony Blair's Labour Government in 1999 to eradicate child poverty by 2020, which the Conservatives in Opposition under David Cameron had accepted as a "shared goal" ("an aspiration, not a pledge") in 2006. The proposed legislation was first read as the Child Poverty Bill in June 2009. Its sponsors were Labour politicians Stephen Timms, then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and Bill McKenzie.
In its comprehensive, ambitious scope and focus on poorer children, the Act has been compared to educational proposals made in Australia over a similar timeframe by the 2011 Gonski Report.
Other provisions
Child Poverty Commission
Chapter 9, section 8 of the Act required the establishment of an independent Child Poverty Commission to oversee progress towards the targets, which via the Welfare Reform Act 2012 became the Child Poverty and Social Mobility Commission. This section of the Act was later revised by chapter 7, section 6 of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, which renamed the body as the Social Mobility Commission.
Criticism
The act received Royal Assent on 25 March 2010, six weeks before the 2010 general election which brought to an end 13 years of Labour government. A paper published in the Political Quarterly in 2012 described it as "[o]ne of Labour's parting shots before leaving office": "Although passed with cross-party support, the Child Poverty Act 2010 was clearly something of a stitch up, intended to embarrass an incoming government if it tried to shirk its commitments or move the goal posts."
As noted by the politically independent but Conservative-leaning think tank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) in 2016, the targets had been deliberately envisaged as being impossible to delay or quietly lay aside.
The public source identifies “Child Poverty Act 2010” as public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Child, Poverty and Public.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Child Poverty Act 2010”, the useful work is to connect “public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5097768. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2020, 1999 and 2006.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Child Poverty Act 2010”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Child Poverty Act 2010 primary sources, Child Poverty Act 2010 archive and Child research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Child Poverty Act 2010”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Child Poverty Act 2010” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.