Child Poverty Bill

The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that poverty has many facets. One of the welcome aspects of the Bill is that rather than pick a single point of a graph and say, "That is poverty, but that is not", it measures poverty in various ways, including material deprivation and persistent poverty. My hunch is that the Government have made a rod for their own back with this Bill. They have set four targets. The absolute poverty target is a waste of time. It will just enable the Government to pat themselves on the back—if they cannot reach the poverty target for 10 years ago, we are really in trouble and might as well all go home. The target on persistent poverty, however, will be a nightmare, as will the one on material deprivation. Therefore, it is entirely laudable that the Government have included those targets in the Bill, and I welcome that.