Child Poverty Bill

I agree that we have had an excellent debate. I really hope that we can forge a consensus on the aims of the Bill and the reforms that it will deliver. The goal is that no child's life prospects should be limited by an upbringing in poverty. My hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr. Reed) was among the contributors to the debate who set out how some of those limitations are applied in practice. Every child should have a good start in life, a fulfilling childhood and opportunities to thrive and flourish. That is why, after 1997, we first halted and then reversed the previously inexorable rise in child poverty. There are 500,000 fewer children living below the poverty line than there were in 1999, and another 500,000 are expected to be lifted above the line by the measures announced in the past couple of years. I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) on child poverty in London, and I agree with her that it is dishonest to pretend that there has been no progress over the past 10 years, although I welcome the fact that Conservative Members are now willing to talk about poverty in a way that simply did not happen when we had a Conservative Government. There has been substantial progress over the past 10 years. Reforms since 1997 have made households with children in the least well-off fifth of the population £4,750 a year better off, on average. The minimum income for a family with one child and one person working 35 hours a week has increased by more than 30 per cent. in real terms since 1999. There has been very substantial progress, but there remains a great deal more to do. That is the importance of the Bill, which will provide renewed impetus, build and sustain momentum and create a clear definition of success. It will put in place a framework for accountability and improve partnership working at local level to tackle child poverty. The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) made a particularly interesting speech, drawing on his many years of work in this area. I am grateful for his support for the Bill and I agree with his characterisation of what was happening inexorably under the Tory Government. I hope that he will send me some of his collected works; I look forward to reading them over the summer, and to having a rigorous debate with him and others in Committee after the break. The hon. Gentleman and one or two others suggested that the current fiscal pressures put the ambitions for 2020 at risk. I would rather put it the other way round. Under the obligations in the Bill, once it receives Royal Assent, we need to devise a strategy for child poverty that is consistent with the fiscal consolidation that will be necessary over the next few years. That is what clause 15 requires. The eradication of child poverty and the fiscal consolidation set out in the Budget are not incompatible, and the strategy that the Bill requires will have to demonstrate how we can deliver both. Financial support will have to be tightly targeted—that is true. Having a job is the best way out of poverty, but too many families today remain below the poverty line even though a family member is in work. We need to do better for those families, and to set out in the strategy how public services, which have seen a huge boost in funding over the past 10 years, will help us to tackle poverty. Some hon. Members have rightly said that the benefits of the proposals will far outweigh the costs. Creating a fairer society will benefit everyone. Without the action that we are proposing, we would need to continue meeting the real and high costs of inequality, and we would continue to miss out on the value of unfulfilled potential. The eradication of child poverty will have significant benefits for the economy. Entrenched crime and poor health impose big costs on public services and prevent them from operating as effectively as they could. The hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) was right to mention the recent estimate by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that the cost to the economy of child poverty is around £25 billion a year. The challenge is to work out how to tackle that cost effectively, and to realise those substantial cost savings over time in a way that is consistent with the consolidation that will be needed over the next few years. That is what the strategy required by the Bill will need to do. Measuring poverty is not straightforward; there are widely different approaches to it, and we have heard about some of them in the debate. The definition of success in the Bill results from careful and widespread consideration and consultation. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) referred to the widespread consultation that had taken place, and to the quite widely held sense of ownership of the Bill and of the way it sets about its task. It involves four poverty measures: relative poverty, combined low income and material deprivation, absolute low income and persistent poverty. Those four reflect the reality that income and the length of time experienced on low income and being without things are all important, and success will be achieved only if all four of those targets are hit. Those targets are ambitious, but achievable. If we meet them by 2020 and maintain them subsequently, we can be confident of making a big impact on children's well-being and on the well-being of the country, as those children go on to become adults.