Child Poverty Bill

My hon. Friend is on to a very good point. This is a question of what the Government focus on. This slightly contradicts the point that I made earlier. If we are serious about child poverty, we need to restructure Government Departments and align them so that they can bear down on the problem. My hon. Friend might ask why we should not do that in relation to elderly poverty or to deprivation of all kinds. Of course these are important issues. I have been in the House for 17 years. I believe that, for all sorts of reasons, the situation is now significantly worse—with the lack of social cohesion, with behaviour issues and the fact that so many children are now growing up in households of chaos—than when I first entered the House in 1992. I do not say that in any political sense. I would love to see whichever Government are in place after the next election focusing on this issue and really getting underneath the surface to try to tackle it.