Recommendation 8

Ministers have made clear to us that they consider absolute income poverty to be the most useful measure. They have been dismissive of the Government’s own measure of relative income poverty. But both measures have advantages and disadvantages. The Secretary of State is of course right to say that a relative measure can, in the short term, produce counter-intuitive results—but it has great value for assessing long term trends. We are concerned to see Ministers focusing on a single measure, rather than drawing on the rich information offered by DWP’s own set of income-based measures, which combines relative, ‘absolute’ and broader material deprivation statistics.