Child Poverty Bill

Although most of us sympathise with the concerns that the noble Lord has expressed, I—and, I suspect, others—resist his wish to add the new clause to the Bill. The Bill is already hugely challenging. It is about something that, to a limited degree, government has some capacity to deliver, which is transfers of income to address income poverty as measured by the four targets. The noble Lord has produced a list of additional items that, as the noble Baroness rightly said, are extremely hard, first, to measure and, secondly, to deliver. When this was discussed, at the other end of the building, there was a competition among Members of the Committee to add what they called Christmas decorations, or Christmas baubles, to the Christmas tree. Among others was not just domestic violence but housing overcrowding. Why is that not mentioned, because that, too, is a key driver of children’s underperformance at school? Financial incompetence leading to debt is one of the key differences between two people with identical incomes. One is in material deprivation; the other is not. Why? Because one has gone to the pawnbroker, instead of the credit union, for capital goods. What about mental health and mental illness? Why is that not mentioned? All the evidence suggests that that is a more profound driver than all this little lot put together.