Child Poverty Bill

The House might have thought that the hon. Gentleman was making a slightly different point—that it has all been pretty flat for 20 years, and that this is all terribly difficult. In fact, he picked a point halfway up a hill—a hill for which the Conservative party was responsible—because the figures continued to rise after his starting point. The achievements of the Labour Government might not have gone far enough, but they peaked the figures at the top of the hill and started us back down it again, and we are now halfway back down the hill that he started halfway up. The situation has not been static; a long-term trend of grotesque inequality, which his party presided over with apparent equanimity, has been reversed.