Child Poverty Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck), who made a thoughtful and passionate speech, and with whom I enjoy serving on the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I am used to her intellectual analysis, and we have seen some of that this afternoon. We all want to eradicate or severely reduce child poverty. There is much in the Bill that we can all support, and we wish it well. We hope that it works. Whichever Government oversee its implementation, we very much hope that child poverty in this country will be reduced. However, I would like to make a few comments, and I hope that the Financial Secretary, who is a very reasonable man, may take some of them on board and seek to improve the Bill as it goes through Committee, although sadly I shall be supporting him only from a distance in that process. I want first to explore the issue of targets. It seems to be becoming quite a fashionable framework for the Government to impose a target and then set up a commission to monitor it—we have seen that primarily with climate change. One of the problems with targets is that they can be a distortion. We asked the Home Secretary about targets when he appeared before the Home Affairs Committee last week. The police now have only one target, which is public confidence. A couple of years ago, however, they had dozens of targets. There is now a recognition that targets can sometimes be a distortion. Targets can also be a disappointment. Perhaps the most famous set of targets in the world are the millennium development goals, according to which we will do tremendous things by 2015, but sadly—tragically—it looks as though we will not hit those targets or anything like them by 2015. I just hope that we have not set people up for a huge disappointment, which will not help the implementation of policy. I therefore worry slightly about the Government just saying, "Here's the target and this is a solution." A target is not a substitute for a plan and a strategy. I would like to see a little more depth to the Government's plan and strategy in the Bill. A target can give us the impression that we are doing something, when in fact all we are doing is creating a target. As for the commission that will oversee that target, I wish it luck; but as we have heard today, it will not be significantly resourced, so I wonder what contribution it will make. We must not forget that a recent UN report concluded that the children growing up in the UK right now are some of the unhappiest in the whole of Europe. Why is that? The answer is not just about pounds, shillings and pence—that point is the missing ingredient in the Bill and in this debate, although it has been reflected slightly in some of the interventions. How many ways are there of raising children out of poverty? We can increase benefits significantly—we had an exchange about that earlier, although I do not pretend to be an expert on the benefits system; I will leave that to the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb), who certainly is an expert on it—but the call on the Exchequer will be dramatic. We know that we can improve access to employment, which is a significant way of helping children and families get out of poverty, and I frequently ask myself how we go about that when I encounter poverty in my constituency surgeries. It was rather unkind of an earlier speaker to suggest that Conservative Members do not understand or encounter poverty; we all encounter poverty in our daily lives and in our constituency business. Access to employment is critical, but we must wonder how much there will be over the next few years when we are caught up this serious recession, with private sector unemployment still rising and possibly public sector jobs being lost in the next five years, whoever wins the next general election. So we can increase benefits and improve access to employment, but a third thing that we can focus on—it is not tackled in the Bill—is improving the stability of the framework in which children grow up. The Bill is primarily about financial poverty, but children suffer all kinds of poverty—it is not just about pounds, shillings and pence. The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North made an important point about children who cannot afford to go to the cinema, go on a family trip or go out with their friends. I accept that those are serious impediments, but children are also poor in terms of encouragement, stability, a nurturing environment, and a framework of values in which they can grow and succeed. It is not about single parents—it is about households of chaos, as I tend to call them, and broken families. How many children grow up in households of chaos where they do not enjoy a sense of security and stability and tend to go from pillar to post? That is one of the greatest factors in the creation of poverty. There is not much about that in the Bill, and that worries me. There is a missed opportunity in clause 8(5). In considering and measuring how we are making progress on child poverty, if we are to take into account education, health and housing—all very sensible—why on earth should we not take into account the frameworks of stability and security in which children are growing up? That is a key factor. I recognise that there is no magic wand to create those frameworks. However, I hope that when the Committee considers the Bill line by line, it will at least debate that, and perhaps add the requirement that we should take into account the stability and security that can breed the nurturing environment and freedom from poverty that we want for all our children. Of course the Bill is well meaning, but it slightly misses the point about the cause of poverty for too many children—it would be better if it said a little about stability and family breakdown. I strongly support the policy advocated by my Front-Bench colleagues on putting a form of stability back into the tax system. I am modern enough to accept that not everybody is going to get married. I happen to be married, as are many people in this Chamber. The statistics tell us that marriage creates a form of stability that no other union or relationship has known in the past or is likely to know in future. However, I recognise that lots of people do not want to get married—that is fine. I am interested not so much in marriage as in promoting stability for our young children. I think that marriage is the most important vehicle for stability; none the less, I want those who choose another way of life to enjoy a stable relationship, at least while their children are growing up. I am probably pulling the rug from under my feet by asking how we can achieve that in relation to non-married couples, which is a tricky thing to do. I see that the hon. Member for Northavon is thinking of intervening on me—I hope that he will stay in his seat, because I do not have an easy answer. However, at least we can make a start with the significant number of people who choose to be married. If we had a tax system that favoured marriage, or at least did away with the penalty on couples, that could give a wider choice to people who have chosen not to get married, and who could then opt into that system. Although we cannot pass a Bill to create stability, we could nudge people by sending a strong signal that we want to underpin stability for families; that would create the right mood music. I want to see much more early intervention in the lives of children who are clearly in difficulty—not only those who are at risk but those who are in danger of growing up under-achieving and in poverty. The idea that has come from Conservative Front Benchers about equipping and deploying an army of district nurses would be the right way forward. Having experienced, practical people going into the home, seeing what is going on, being able to give advice and acting as a gateway to other advisers would be a useful tool for underpinning stability and early intervention for children who are in danger of falling into poverty and the kind of under-achievement that we see all too frequently. We talk about these difficult-to-achieve issues to do with creating stability, supporting parents and early intervention, but we do not expect the civil service to do that as it cannot easily be done by the state. The Bill is oddly and disappointingly silent about harnessing the resources of the voluntary and charitable sectors. I am not saying that they can solve every ill—of course they cannot—but there is a vast reservoir of good will and a vast army of people who can supply some of the advice, wisdom, time and support that so many of these families and parents are struggling to find. I welcome the provision on local authorities and their delivery partners, but the situation as regards outcomes is very patchy around the country. Many local authorities are not good at giving leadership to the voluntary and charitable sectors in their communities and ensuring that there is better co-ordination. We need to improve the situation—the Bill does not do so—and I hope that that can be done in Committee. Why is the voluntary sector able to succeed more than the civil service—more than paid employees or the state—in supporting parents and families who are struggling? It is a question of motivation, of time, and of being able to give a personal, one-on-one commitment to seeing a problem through. That is what many people need. The voluntary sector can help with that, and we need to be a lot better at harnessing it. We need to include in that the faith communities, whichever faith might be involved. We must be a lot better at deciding what faith communities can do, what they cannot do, and what we want them to do. Of course, no one wants to see them proselytising at the expense of the public purse—that is completely wrong. On the other hand, we do not want to intervene in charitable works with a spiritual component that are undertaken by faith communities, and try to squeeze the life out of them. We cannot say, "Oh yes, that works—we'd like you to do more of it, please, but here's a set of rules we want you to follow that will mean that you won't be getting the same results as previously." This must be based on results. We must monitor what the voluntary sector is doing and vet it with a light touch—it must comply with professional standards—but we must not put it in a straitjacket that squeezes the life out of its performance. It has a huge part to play in supporting and underpinning families and children, and I wish that the Bill did more to encourage that—it is another wasted opportunity. I am nervous about the setting up of another quango. I have heard that it is not one of the most expensive, but even appointing such independent people would be an expensive process in itself. There is a grievous omission in the Bill as regards children in care—60,000 youngsters who are surely the poorest of the poor, in view of all the opportunities that have been denied them after their removal from their families, for all kinds of legitimate reasons. Now that we are talking about child poverty, is it not time for a major push in trying to intervene more effectively in the lives of children in care, particularly when so many of them leave care aged 16 and go into a vacuum? I ask the Minister to reflect on that.