Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, like many of you before me, I begin by expressing my gratitude and thanks for the welcome extended to me in the very brief time that I have been in your Lordships' House. A good deal of advice has been offered to me, much of it pointing in the same direction, but not so, perhaps, with regard to the weighty matter of when to make a maiden speech. Some say, "Do it immediately"; others say, "Wait a few months until you are more used to the place", with a whole range in between. Maybe that reflects something of the diversity of views that we hold on so many other rather more important matters. Nevertheless, I am delighted to be able to make a contribution on this Bill. I have long been of the view that within the United Kingdom, the two most urgent and pressing matters are the inequality and widening gap between rich and poor, on the one hand, and the breakdown of family life and marriage, on the other. Hot on the heels of those two—perhaps that is the right phrase—as we have been observing, has been climate change, and many other issues, but none, I think, is more important. Both those issues come together in the Bill. We meet on the first sitting day after the Christmas Recess, and have therefore been focusing our thoughts on the birth of Christ, knowing, as we do, that there was no room in the inn. There is a tendency among far too many people to want to romanticise the stable and to suggest that somewhere that was clearly cold, draughty and immensely unhygienic was nevertheless somehow suitable—though not, we would imagine, for our own children or grandchildren to be born, let alone for the son of God. Within a very brief time, he was a refugee, having to escape for his life. We do not know quite what impact these experiences had later on his thinking and teaching, but we know that he taught that every child matters and that unless we, ""turn and become like children"," we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. The Church of England has nearly 5,000 church schools and 1 million or more pupils within them. We have 500,000 children and young people involved in other groups, in worship and in activities during the week, and thereby we demonstrate our deep commitment to valuing children, to working with them and for them and to serving them as best we can. Naturally, like others, I welcome the Bill, but I also urge that we keep before us the obvious fact that, vital though it is to set the targets—and we may well find ourselves modifying quite how they are expressed—the crucial part is to meet those targets, as well as the action that follows. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester spoke about the outstanding work of the Children’s Society and other noble Lords referred to the Good Childhood Inquiry. This major work has emphasised that what children say they want above everything else are stable, secure, loving relationships within their own homes. The absence of this love and these relationships are the greatest of all poverties. This is in no way to minimise the horror of the abject financial poverty that is the focus of the Bill, or, as has already been expressed, the moral obligation upon us to do our utmost to eradicate it, but it is to put the financial poverty into the right perspective. We have already been reminded of the 2007 UNICEF report that placed us at the bottom of the league table of the 21 richest nations. That was a league table of well-being, which is not just about money. Poverty affects many aspects of a child’s life and is contributed to by a wide diversity of factors. Among those is poverty of aspiration, which contributes to the fact that the proportion of children from poorer homes in higher education has not changed over recent years, despite the extra places in colleges and universities and the encouragement of children from poorer households to look to that opportunity and take it. In a similar vein, there is a real quandary for a lone parent without work if she or he is offered work. The quandary is between the extra money that they are likely to bring into their household and the pressure that that places on their time and the lessened opportunity they have to give to their child or children the emotional support they need. We need to do more to provide a financial taper that allows this line between unemployment and full employment to be crossed more easily. We also need a taper in other areas, where changing a category of classification can result in a step change in circumstances. A financial taper would, for example, make it easier for a single parent to be able to afford childcare, which is so necessary. If poverty is not just about money, we need to be more joined up in our thinking and action in addressing all the underlying causes, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said. As the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions put it, ""family breakdown is a route into poverty for many children".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/7/09; col. 616.]" The noble Lord, Lord Freud, also intimated that earlier. In a similar vein, the Institute for Public Policy Research report in 2006 observed: ""Much recent US research reports a consistent overarching finding that children who grow up in an ‘intact, two-parent family’ with both biological parents do better on a wide range of outcomes than children who grow up in a single-parent family. While this research may be instinctively difficult for those on the Left to accept, the British evidence seems to support it"." Surely it must follow that in being serious about addressing child poverty, we must also address the need to support parents and recognise that support needs to be given early. There is ample evidence, for example, that relationship education programmes make a difference. The churches do a great deal in terms of marriage preparation and support, relationship development, parenting courses and so on. We know what significant contributions they can make in aiding all types of families, whether with married, co-habiting or single parents. Whatever the nature of the family unit, early support can make a real difference. The director of One Plus One, Penny Mansfield, wrote recently: ""If we are concerned about the wellbeing of children, we must look first at how their parents are getting on"." She continued: ""Our research shows that relationships can be strengthened and breakdown in some cases prevented. Good early interventions have been shown to decrease costs incurred later by schools, social ""services, health services, youth justice and the police, but to truly reap the rewards they must be early. But it takes bold political will to spend now to save money later"." This research, like so much other, comes from the voluntary sector and underlines the need for voluntary agencies to be encouraged in their work with properly funded statutory agencies, both making their unique contributions as equal but different partners in the joint enterprise. As the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions observed when introducing the Bill: ""We know that no law alone can end child poverty".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/7/09; col. 603.]" It has to be accompanied by the will and the action from all quarters. The diocese that I have the privilege to serve covers not only Herefordshire but south Shropshire, about 20 parishes in Wales and a little bit of Worcestershire. Half of its small total population of 330,000 lives in communities of less than 500. Not surprisingly, we are therefore the most rural English diocese, so noble Lords will not be surprised if at this point I say that we must not forget rural poverty and rural households in greatest financial need. Rural poverty may largely be invisible as a statistic, which is part of the problem, but if you are the child, it is not invisible but extremely real. To give an example from my diocese, one of our village schools has only 87 children, 24 per cent of whom have free school meals. In a village community, that is a massive figure. The head teacher there, like head teachers of so many schools, says that the number of children who are entitled to free school meals is considerably higher, but parents are reluctant to request them, partly because of the stigma that they still see attached to them—however much they are meant to be confidential, in such a small community, they are not—and partly because of rural pride. Therefore, the statistics do not always reveal the whole truth. South Shropshire has been the poorest rural district in our country. With a small population, this issue is desperately difficult to address. Households are scattered and communities are tiny. Thankfully, the problem can be helped by the strength of many of our communities themselves and by the part that the churches and the villages play within it. Reference has been made already to Sure Start, and I want to refer to Peterchurch, a village in Herefordshire, where a hugely innovative project is being undertaken by the church and the church council, which, in partnership with the Church Urban Fund, the Herefordshire Council and the DCSF, have raised £500,000. Part of the church has been set aside for a children’s centre which is run by Sure Start and serves the very scattered communities of the golden valley. It addresses the needs of all households, including especially those with the lowest incomes, by providing, among other things, integrated early learning and childcare for babies and children under the age of five, childcare which is suitable for working families, family support and outreach, child and family health services, and so on. While it is fundamental that we commit ourselves at every level of organisation—governmental, statutory, voluntary including the churches, and so on—to reduce child poverty, it is also vital that we address, as the right reverend Prelate stressed, the associated issue of inequality. In part, measures of child poverty, as we have been reflecting, touch on that, but the recent work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett highlights widening inequality as exacerbating all the issues that those in poverty face. They say that among the wealthiest nations the four that have least inequality between richest and poorest also have the best quality of life for all. The General Synod of our church called for "minimum income standards", as have others, which would strengthen the focus of eradicating child poverty and close the inequality gap. Finally, while equality has risen within this country and the others of the United Kingdom, it has also risen across countries. That to which we aspire within our own shores must be that to which we aspire for others within our global village. We have committed ourselves to world millennium development goals which include much to do with child poverty. As we strengthen our processes and resolve again to eradicate that poverty in Britain, let us similarly strengthen again our resolve to achieve those millennium goals for the benefit of those who are far poorer in other countries. I look forward to pursuing some of these issues further and, above all, to their being reflected in future legislation and action.