Child Poverty Bill

I shall be brief in speaking to this new clause on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which reported on the Bill on 10 November. There are two sets of Liberal Democrat amendments in this group, the first of which, new clause 4, proposes that the Secretary of State should have a duty to implement the strategy on child poverty reduction. The second set—amendments 35 and 36—is about consulting children and the representatives of children. Let me deal with new clause 4 first. In our report, we identified that, unlike in what might be considered comparable statutory regimes set out in legislation such as the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, there is no statutory duty in the Bill to implement the strategy. We engaged in correspondence with the Government to ask why that was. We support in principle having statutory duties to implement, as Parliament wishes, access to economic and social rights. That makes sense, as far as we are concerned, and we find it disappointing that there is no such duty regarding the strategy. The Government offered three justifications for not including a duty to implement the strategy. The first was that a separate part of the Bill""places a binding duty on the Secretary of State to meet the child poverty targets, which is 'the strongest possible incentive' for the Government and their partners to deliver a strategy that over time achieves the targets."" The second was that""including a duty to implement the strategy risks tying the Government to measures which subsequent evidence or analysis shows to be ineffective or inappropriate."" The third was that""the Bill makes provision for political and public accountability for not implementing the strategy, by requiring that the Secretary of State's annual reports to Parliament must state whether the strategy has been implemented in full, and, if not, the reasons for this."" We considered those justifications, and offered our opinion on them. We do not believe that any offer sufficient justification for not including the duty to implement the strategy. The first, which was that the child poverty targets work and that there is therefore no need for a duty, does not work, and we used the comparison of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995—that although many things are done to deliver the strategy, there was still a duty to deliver access for the disabled. For that reason, we believe that it does not seem sensible to make a distinction in this regard. In respect of the second justification that the Government offered, we did not believe that requiring that duty to be implemented would cause inflexibility because, in other areas, a public authority is entitled to take account of subsequent evidence or analysis when implementing a strategy. It cannot ignore such things just because it has a duty to implement a strategy. We said:""We note that in the Disability Discrimination Act a duty to implement coexists with a duty to prepare further accessibility strategies after the first one, and similarly in the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act there is both a duty to implement and a duty to assess progress and revise the strategy."" In respect of the Government's third justification for not implementing the strategy, we said that, while we welcomed the political accountability that is included in the Bill, we did not""consider such political accountability to be mutually exclusive with legal accountability"" to implement provision. We therefore recommend to both Houses that the duty to implement the child poverty strategy be included, as we believe that that will ""enhance opportunities to hold the Secretary of State accountable for failure to make progress towards the targets between now and 2020."" Given the debate that we have had about the 2010 targets, it would be a sign of political confidence on the part of the Minister and the Government if they were to accept that they both should and could include the duty in the Bill. On the other amendments in my name and that of the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), in paragraph 1.57 of our report, we said:""In our view the duties to consult children in the preparation of child poverty strategies are insufficiently precise, because they leave it to the discretion of the Secretary of State (or Scottish Ministers/Northern Ireland department) as to whether or not to consult children directly at all: they could choose to consult organisations working with or representing children instead. We recommend that the duty to consult be amended to give better effect to the right recognised in international human rights law to participate in the relevant decision-making process, by requiring consultation with both children and organisations working with or representing them, and by requiring consultation with the relevant Children's Commissioner."" Amendment 36 therefore proposes the word "and" be substituted for "or" when talking about children and the organisations that represent them. Amendment 35 proposes inserting a new subsection in clause 9 that would require consultation with the Children's Commissioners for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There does not seem to be any good reason not to require consultation with them, as they have been set up as experts in, and champions of, children's rights. Members of the Committee do not believe that that would create inflexibility with regard to the bodies that the Government consult. The amendment does not say that "only" those groups be consulted, but just requires that they are consulted. Given the political sensibilities about the appointment of the Children's Commissioner, it would show appropriate confidence by the Government to include a duty to consult that person, whom they have gone to such great lengths to appoint after creating the post in a welcome move. Those are the bases for the new clause and amendments, and I hope that the House will support them.