Child Poverty Bill

Perhaps I may respond to the Minister’s speech, because he misses the point. Although I would not have worded it in this way, and I am not thirled to a three-month timetable, the amendment’s value is that it provides an opportunity to reflect on the policy experience of the past 10 years. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, raised some interesting policy questions, which deserve examination. The obvious answer as to why there was a dip in momentum in this whole policy area after 2004-05 was that the Government stopped spending money on it. There was a vast improvement after child tax credits were introduced and the whole tax credit initiative was undertaken. You can argue for a long time over whether or not that was effective or organised, but there was a major boost over what went previously. My question, which may be slightly different from that of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, is why that momentum did not continue. There was a big step up and people such as Donald Hirsch would say that you could see the difference that it made. Why did the Government then turn away from deploying what appeared to be an effective set of policies? I do not know the answer, but it is hard to argue that the resources were not available. That is another important point that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, is making. What we are all facing—Lisa Harker said this in her report—is that the next 10 years will be even harder, because we do not have the resources that we have had for the past 10 years. Someone needs to sit down and think carefully about the active labour markets and where the policy fits in of work for those who can and security for those who cannot. What did it do? What did it not do? What could have been done better? They should examine the uprating policy. In the other place, every Select Committee inquiry on this area—I was responsible for two or three of them—found that, if you uprate on the basis of the retail prices index while the rest of the world is organised on the basis of an increase in earnings, year on year people will inexorably slip further and further behind. That will happen for the next 10 years, starting from where we are right now, unless something is done about it. The point of the amendment is that someone needs to assess the Bill soon after it is passed—as I said, it might take more than three months. I do not know whether the Bill is a diversionary tactic, but it is a process Bill. There is nothing in it that by itself will make anyone any richer. That is a frustration that I think the Committee will find. We all want to get our jackets off and get stuck in to what will actually make a difference. All that the Bill gives us is a process. It is viable as far as it goes, but there is nothing new in it, except extending the responsibility to local authorities and to the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, which is valuable, although they may think that it is a graveyard pass, because they will get sucked into responsibility for not meeting the targets so that the blame can be shared. That is how they see it; they may be wrong, but that is how they see it. The amendment has value. The Child Poverty Commission is not the right body to do this job. If we are to give proper consideration to everything that has gone on heretofore to learn lessons to hand on to the Child Poverty Commission, what is proposed in the amendment is an excellent way to do that. For the Government to hide behind the fact that the figures will not be available is to miss the point. The amendment calls for a radical look at how things have been done—successes as well as failures—so that that can inform the process. I have two other points to make. First, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, made an important point. We will come to it later, but, in passing, the four nations group, the importance of which the Government have recognised, should be in the Bill for the reasons that the noble and right reverend Lord mentioned. There should be some recognition of the four nations group, because if it is to hold the ring and be successful—I hope that it will be, although there will be problems and it will not happen by accident—this needs to be carefully thought through. Although I think that the Government understand its importance from my discussions with them, I share the concern of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames. There should be formal recognition of the group in the Bill. Perhaps we can find some way to do that in the course of our proceedings. There is an enormous spatial dimension to this whole question. The analyses of the figures and the measures that we are contriving in the Bill are mainly snapshots. The Family Resources Survey considers the snapshots, although there is a longitudinal element in the General Household Survey. Looking just at what is happening at a particular time in families does not take account of persistence. We will come to that later—we have tabled amendments on it. The cities report in the press yesterday is very important, because it captures the fact that different cities and different communities in this country are in an entirely different place when it comes to child poverty. Places such as Springburn in Glasgow are very different from Northampton or Reading; you cannot ignore that. The figures have to be handled with very great care. We will come to amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, concerning the equivalence ratios and the Gini coefficients. You have to be careful how you use all those, because they are only rough measures and can be treated only relatively. We cannot invest all the importance of the policy dimension in future in those measures alone. However, we cannot forget the huge spatial dimension. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, will come to this in his inimitable way in the course of our proceedings, but, finally, there are not just these figures but a wider hinterland of factors that determine whether low-income families are in trouble or not and whether or not we reach the target in 10 years’ time. I am sure that it was not deliberate, but I think that the Minister missed the point of the amendment. It is an attempt to be positive and to capture lessons that we should sensibly learn to take the policy forward.