Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, perhaps I may raise a further, possibly technical question in the discussion on the amendment. It concerns the incorporation in the proposed legislation of the Assembly of Northern Ireland and the Scottish Parliament. My question—raised also by the noble Lord, Lord Freud—concerns the definition of the target that will be set. Will the Minister assure me that, in the process of reaching the target and assessing whether the United Kingdom as a whole has reached the target, due attention will be paid to a uniform definition of how the devolved authorities in the two areas that I mentioned provide information that will go towards the UK target as a whole? I raise this because in Northern Ireland, as many noble Lords know, there are sensitive political issues surrounding the definition of poverty that is used from time to time. For example, the issue of free meals is politically sensitive. Any noble Lords who know Northern Ireland will realise that this is a sensitive issue. I would not like a Bill that I certainly support to suffer in its implementation because of a lack of clarity on how the various definitions were arrived at to measure the reaching or not reaching of the overall United Kingdom target. I hope that my question is relevant.