Deprivation/Child Poverty

Lady Winterton, I am sure that you would never give me a heart attack, but I thank you for your consideration. It is a pleasure to serve under you this afternoon, and to be back in Westminster Hall debating reports by the Work and Pensions Committee. I was a member of the Committee during the whole of the last Parliament, and I remember many happy Thursday afternoons spent here debating reports, including the report ““Child Poverty in the UK””, the second report of the 2003-04 Session, to which I shall refer this afternoon. I congratulate everyone who has spoken. Everyone here comes to the subject with passion, interest, different perspectives and detailed knowledge from their constituencies in different parts of the country. That is valuable, and it has added a lot of colour and local detail to our important debate. I shall add one or two perspectives from my own area of the country. It is important to put the matter in context. Child poverty, sadly, has risen for the second year in a row: by 200,000 before housing costs and by 300,000 after housing costs. Some 2.9 million children are now in poverty, on a before-housing-cost basis, and 3.9 million on an after-housing-cost basis. Those figures are the same as those in 2002, so regrettably we have not made any progress on that incredibly important issue over the past four years. The situation is even more worrying than that, however, when we consider the number of children living in severe poverty, which is defined as children living in households with less than 40 per cent. of median income. According to an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, in March 2007, that figure has increased by 600,000, from 2.5 million to 3.1 million, and a report last year by Save the Children stated that 1.3 million children in the UK are living in severe poverty. Although we want all children out of poverty—taking the 60 per cent. definition—I hope that other Members will join with me in saying that it is urgent that we do the most to help the poorest. I hope that that is common ground for us all. The Treasury Committee's report on the 2007 comprehensive spending review made the point:"““It is important that efforts to meet targets do not lead to an insufficient concentration upon the worst forms of child poverty in the very poorest households.””" That is a comment on the Government's overall approach of trying to deal with child poverty through the tax and benefits system, although that must be integral to our approach—that should answer the question raised by the hon. Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy). I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) that we need a more broad-based approach, particularly to the pathways leading to poverty, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) said in his report, ““Breakthrough Britain””. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation—not linked to the Conservative party in any known way—said that the"““strategy against poverty and social exclusion pursued since the late 1990s is now largely exhausted””—" its words, not mine. I shall not refer to the UNICEF report, because the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) has already quoted from it quite extensively, other than to say that the UK was voted lowest out of 21 OECD countries for child well-being.