[2] 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.

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.

[8] 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.

"[9] 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.

[10] In a meeting with the Work and Pensions Select Committee in June 2009, Timms had explained: "In the way the Bill has been drafted, the commitment to hit those four targets is binding by 2020.

[...T]he only way to avert the possibility of a judicial review forcing a future government to take whatever steps are needed to hit the target would be for the legislation to be repealed."