Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 2, I shall speak also to all the other amendments in the group, as they are consequential. At Second Reading, I went into some detail about why we believe that the figures after housing costs, as set out in the households below average income surveys, should be added as a fifth target. What I did not say explicitly was that the difference between the number of children living in poverty according to the figures taken before housing costs and those taken after housing costs is huge. According to the latest figures, on the before housing costs measure some 2.9 million children are living in poverty, but on the after housing costs measure the figure is 4 million. Is this why the Government are so keen on the before housing costs figure? I noted, as did the Minister, that in the Second Reading debate the noble Lords, Lord Freud and Lord Sheikh, both used the after housing costs measure when talking about the number of children in poverty. Was that because 4 million sounds more dramatic than 2.9 million or was it because the after housing costs figure is the one that all groups such as Gingerbread and Save the Children use on an everyday basis? The Equality and Human Rights Commission states clearly that not taking housing costs into consideration can mask the poverty of certain groups. There can be no question but that housing is a very large part of most people’s budget and therefore a big determinant of their living standards. Looking at a person’s standard of living without taking housing costs into account is to miss a significant part of the picture. At this point, I must repeat what I said at Second Reading. We are not advocating the replacement of the before housing costs target with the after housing costs target; we just suggest that the after housing costs target should be added. Would it cost more to add a fifth target? No, it would not, because the households below average income surveys collect both sets of data. There is an explanation in their dataset under the heading "Methodology", which states that there are arguments both ways and that the two sets of data are set out, ""principally to take into account variations in housing costs that themselves do not correspond to comparable variations in the quality of housing"." If the Government themselves believe that it is important to collect both sets of data, why are they not both in the Bill, given the dramatic difference in the numbers of children in each survey? One of the most powerful arguments, which I also advanced at Second Reading, is that housing benefit is included in the measure of income before housing costs, so a large family who receive housing benefit will appear to have a relatively high income unless that figure is discounted. This distorts the figures not only in London, where housing costs are high relative to income, but in poor rural areas, where housing costs might also be high relative to income. It must also be remembered that in many rural areas there is no social housing to speak of, so all or most rented property is in the most expensive private sector. The Government have two arguments against my amendment. The first argument is that they can make international comparisons only with the before housing costs measure. I think that this is a particularly feeble argument, as the Minister knows. He will have the before housing costs figure for comparisons anyway, so this is a non-argument. The second argument is that housing figures are collected in the material deprivation target, but this does not address housing costs as such. The 21 questions include only two about housing: one is about keeping a house adequately decorated, while the other is about having enough bedrooms for every child of 10 or over so that they can share their bedrooms with a sibling of the same sex. The Minister said at Second Reading that measures of housing quality are included in the list, but those are the only questions that I can find that are about housing. It may be argued that people can choose whether to live in a higher-quality house, but this is not borne out by the experience of many of the groups that advise us. Many people are constrained by factors such as proximity to schools and to work and transport links and they simply cannot choose to live in good-quality housing in a nice area. Perhaps the last word should go to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s reports on what is needed to end child poverty in 2020. All its reports use the after housing costs. It says that this measure is widely reported in the literature and is arguably more informative, especially when considering the economic well-being of individuals at the lower end of income distribution. It also points out that the Government themselves used the after housing costs for the 2004-05 target, so why the change? One is led to the inevitable conclusion that it must be because the before housing costs target looked much better. Rather than argue further for one or the other, what is the barrier to putting both before housing costs and after housing costs in the Bill? I beg to move.