To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what steps his Department is taking to assist (a) workless households with children under five years of age and (b) families in relative poverty with children under five years of age; and if he will make a statement. (226609)

To help children, we must help their families. For most families, paid work is the most important route out of poverty. Accordingly, we have a support package of pre-employment and in-work support measures to help lone parents and couple parents move into work, make work pay, and help sustainability and progression in work. This includes the new deal for lone parents, the new deal for partners and the Government’s 10-year Childcare Strategy.

The Government also have a range of fiscal and support measures to raise family incomes and ensure families with young children can access high quality services to support their child’s development.

Budget 2008 announced £125 million for pilots to test out new and innovative ways of tackling child poverty, over the next three years. The pilots will explore pioneering approaches to tackling child poverty, identifying those that deliver the best results and the most sustainable long-term impacts.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how many and what proportion of three-to five-year olds were living in relative poverty in Leeds West constituency in each year since 1997; (226610)

Our child poverty statistics, published in the Households Below Average Income series, allow a breakdown of child poverty by Government office region. Information on the number and proportion of three to five-year-olds living in relative poverty is not available below the level of Government office region.

Data on the proportion of three to five-year-olds living in workless households are estimated using the Annual Population Survey (APS). As with any sample survey, estimates from the APS are subject to a margin of uncertainty as different samples give different results. As the group in question is very specific, the estimates are based on very small sample sizes. Therefore, the margin of uncertainty is very large for these estimates and they are deemed unreliable for practical purposes. It is not possible to provide estimates from 1997 to 2003.

The following tables show the number and proportion of children aged three to five living in workless working age households in the Leeds, West constituency for the period January to December in each year since 2004.

Accompanying each estimate is a confidence interval which means that from all samples possible there would be 95 per cent. certainty that the true estimate would lie within the lower and upper bounds.