Child Poverty Bill

No, not at this stage. The Bill ties a future Government to the targets that the current Government have failed to achieve. The Secretary of State may believe that that is clever party politics, but I say to her that such cynical positioning is undignified and belittles the important issues that the Bill should raise. It also sets this whole debate in the realm of the unrealistic; we are all aware of the tremendous pressures on the public finances, yet Ministers seem to have given only a perfunctory nod to such considerations when drafting the Bill. It is important to remember that poverty is not only about economics. In too many parts of our country, we see not just poverty of income, but poverty of opportunity, aspiration and environment. A child who grows up without the opportunities of good education, health care or housing is also a child growing up in poverty. Those lost opportunities may relate to things that many of us in this Chamber took for granted when we were growing up—going on school trips, making visits to museums or swimming pools, taking a holiday, whether in the UK or abroad—but for too many British children, those are experiences that they will never enjoy. When we talk about child poverty, we are also talking about family poverty. Children are poor because their parents are poor. In fact, I would almost like to change the name of the Bill from the Child Poverty Bill to the child and family poverty Bill. That would help us to remember that tackling poverty can never be a matter simply for children's services. Instead, we must adopt a co-ordinated approach that understands the complex roots of deprivation.