ONE of the most important pieces of legislation announced in the last Queen's Speech Bill was the Child Poverty Bill. Currently in draft form the consultation on the bill’s content has just been completed. I was fortunate as secretary of the All Party Group on Poverty to get exclusive access to the bill team along with John Battle the MP for Leeds West who chairs the group.

We have been discussing is what measures, targets and resource implications should be included when the bill is formally published in a few months time. There is also a desire to make sure that the bill is accompanied with suitable materials to explain how it will impact on policy and give practical examples of how these will be implemented. John and I insisted upon this. So much of the success or otherwise of this piece of legislation will depend on establishing good practice and making sure that it is widely disseminated.

Now the government has a good record in this area. However it is likely to fail to reach its target of halving child poverty in the UK by 2010 and eradication it by 2020 which is why this legislation is now really necessary. This is despite massive investment in this domain with the introduction of children’s centres, help with child care and targeted assistance through higher child benefit and child tax credits. That this has had a major impact on reducing child poverty after years in the 80s and 90s when it got significantly worse just shows how hard the government’s task is. Perversely it does become easier to achieve the targets in a recession as the differential between rich and poor becomes less, following the excesses of the last decade. Hopefully the government’s desire to move towards more progressive forms of taxation will speed this process.

For the moment what will be essential is to make sure that we have the strongest law possible to ensure that government commits itself to the delivery of eradication as a principle aim. With that in mind I am hopefully going to be able to run a joint meeting with Save the Children in the constituency to examine, understand and seek to improve what is proposed. I remain passionate about trying to make a difference in this field and hope that we can all pull together to achieve this. * Do you agree with David Drew? Add your own comments here or write to the usual address