Child Poverty Bill

Indeed. That is why a single measure, either before or after housing costs, does not give the full picture. Were housing costs always about housing quality, I would take the right hon. Gentleman's point, but often they are only poorly related to housing quality. Measuring income before and after housing costs, therefore, gives us a fuller picture. The Minister did not respond to my example. She repeated it, but she did not explain why the before housing costs would not be inaccurate in my example. For different circumstances, the two measures would be more or less accurate, which is why we need both. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart), in an impassioned contribution, raised concerns about the number of children in very low—below 40 per cent.—income households. I raised concerns about the data, and having checked the official figures, I can say that the figures below 40 per cent. are not published on a regular basis, because of doubts about their validity, especially with regard to the self-employed. He asked fairly why the figures show what they do, but I am not convinced that they necessarily show anything more than just problems with the data. However, that is unclear, and clearly we need good data, so I take his point. The comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) were informed by his membership of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. He raised an issue that I had not thought of, and I do not think that the Minister's response will offer him the reassurance that he seeks. As the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) said, we have part 1 and part 2. Part 1 children are those who find their way into surveys, and part 2 children are those about whom local authorities have to do something. Part 1 children are privileged in the Bill because they have their own targets and the child poverty commission and so on. That infrastructure does not support the sort of children about whom my hon. Friend was talking, so he raises a valid point. As the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) said, separate targets for the groups in part 1 might be the only way forward. I do not think that they can be melded into the existing targets, so they might need targets of their own.