We need to measure poverty in order to be able to hold government to account. However, the UK no longer has an official measure of poverty for children, adults or pensioners since targets based on reducing child poverty in the UK were abolished in 2015.

While Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have retained income-based measures of poverty. They were dropped by the Westminster government partly because the associated targets were proving difficult to hit, but also because they were flawed in number of key respects.