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For decades British governments looking to set minimum income levels have refused to investigate how much it costs to buy the essential goods and services people need to live healthy lives. This government too is setting arbitrary levels of minimum income, based on calculations that are incomprehensible to the public.

Minimum income standards should mean that the income levels people require to live decent, healthy lives are based on transparent, reliable evidence. They should, however, provide targets against which the voting public can judge to what extent the government and employers are succeeding in eliminating poverty and economic injustice in the UK.

The Work and Pensions Committee of MPs in the report of its inquiry into child poverty has now backed the case for budget standards to underpin poverty thresholds. This is the fourth time the committee has made this recommendation in as many years. It has been ignored by the government even though it is massively supported by the Zacchaeus 2000 Coalition of 66 NGOs comprising faiths, charities, trades unions and health professionals with 10 million members between them.

The Department for Work and Pensions has now received many examples of sound research into the minimum incomes needed for healthy living. It has never entered into discussion about the specific, objective assumptions about nutrition, fuel, clothing, transport etc, on which these minimum incomes have been based. It has never attempted to justify the effect of its decisions about the levels of statutory minimum incomes on healthy living.

Instead, in Measuring Child Poverty, published just before Christmas, the government announced it would be using a complex statistical formula, based on three indicators. None of these are based on a cost of living assessment and, in fact, obscure the most important measure of poverty which is whether people have enough money after their housing costs have been paid to meet the rest of their needs.

Barclays Bank recently agreed to talk to its cleaning contractors at Canary Wharf about the terms and conditions of cleaners including the hourly rate of pay, sick pay, holidays and pensions rather than allowing the market to force pay down to poverty rates.

The Telco (East London Communities Organisation) campaign for a living wage, which inspired Barclays, is grounded in research by the Family Budget Unit at Kings College, London. This is a small first step towards a consensus between the community and employers about minimum income standards, and demonstrates that businesses can also be interested in eradicating poverty.

Zacchaeus 2000 has called on the government to set up a commission to enable it to set minimum income standards and negotiate a wider consensus about minimum levels of income.

The Rev Paul Nicolson is chair of the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust.