Deprivation/Child Poverty

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point, and I entirely understand why he did so. I have some sympathy with the question, but the statisticians tell us that the number is still 600,000. The reason is that the figures can be estimated only to the nearest 100,000; therefore, to the nearest 100,000, the reduction in child poverty is now 600,000, as it was last year. In that sense, we have not gone backwards. I am not a statistician, or at least I have not been one for a long time, so I shall not go further and explain how rounding works, but that is the statisticians' advice. It is important to point out that although the survey showed a reduction, it was not significant enough to change the figure. The Committee is right to say that poverty constrains children's health and happiness. That point was firmly and rightly underlined by my hon. Friend. It makes it harder to succeed at school and to gain skills and qualifications to get on in life. Too many children suffer a poverty of expectations and aspirations, and they do not look forward to a bright future in the way that all of us would wish every child to be able to do. Tackling child poverty is a moral imperative, but it is also an economic necessity. Inequality and disadvantage in communities make them more likely to suffer from crime and antisocial behaviour, and to lack social capital that they can draw on to prosper. That is why, for a strong economy as well as a strong society, the Government made a commitment in 1999 to eradicate child poverty in a generation, and to halve it by 2010. Last week, as a contrast to gloomy news about the world economy, the monthly employment figures showed that the number of people in work in the UK had hit a new record: 29.55 million, the largest number ever. The number claiming unemployment benefit went up a little as well, but it remained in the low 800,000s. The last time the number claiming unemployment benefit was that low was in 1975. It is 10 years since the new deal was introduced. What can we say about the progress of reform since then? It is true that the claimant count has been reduced by almost half, but that is only a partial measure of worklessness. A better yardstick is the number claiming all the out of work benefits: incapacity benefit, lone parent benefit, income support for others and jobseeker's allowance. The number has fallen by almost 20 per cent. since 1997, from 5.5 million to 4.45 million on the latest figures, which are for May last year. It is interesting to look at the graph: the fall has been sustained and consistent. That is an important and substantial achievement. We have delivered what we said we would deliver, and moved people from welfare to work. But it is also clear that there is still more to do. It is important for children, as the experiences of many people whom I meet underline. Last week I was in Paisley, just outside Glasgow, and I visited one of the GP surgeries where Jobcentre Plus pathways to work advisers have been working. It appears that they are extremely effective. I met a lone parent with four children. She had been out of work looking after her children for a long time. She wanted to get back to work but did not think that it would be practical for the reasons that Members fairly raised in this debate: child care, being better off and so on. She did not think that it would be practical with four children. Her GP recommended that she speak to the Jobcentre Plus adviser. Last November, she started part-time work as a traffic warden, and she hopes to join the police force in due course. She told me that when she was unemployed she had zero confidence. She said, ““People say they wouldn't believe I was the same person.”” Her life, and her children's lives, too, are being transformed through work and through the support that she has been given. To pick up on an important point that came out in the exchange between my hon. Friends the Members for High Peak (Tom Levitt) and for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy), that lone parent continues to be in touch with the adviser whom she worked with at the GP surgery, as I saw for myself. She clearly finds that valuable. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak said that he had seen that happening in Cardiff. Such support for lone parents going into work is now offered nation-wide for six months. That is a good example of how we have been improving the system to help people overcome the undoubtedly substantial barriers that they face.