Child Poverty Bill

I disagree with the noble Lord. I think the Bill is about a strategy to reduce child poverty, and the measurement is by the four target indicators in terms of absolute, persistent, material deprivation and relative poverty. Those are the indicators that will form the targets by which performance will be measured. As I say, I do not think there is any difference between any of us about the desirability of meeting some of the objectives that the noble Lord has included in this amendment. Indeed, the criticism already laid out by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—I add to it—is how minimalist his amendment is if he is trying to look at the well-being of the whole child. My argument is different; namely, that this Bill should not carry such additional items because you cannot measure some of them, and even if you could, Government should not interfere with them, and, as regards others, Government could not take any action on them even if they could measure them. If Government cannot do it, this becomes a wish-list, Christmas cracker sort of amendment which I hope very much the noble Lord will not pursue. For example, we can measure family relations, the statistics exist. The ONS will give you all the statistics you want about family size. However, the noble Lord cannot utilise a phrase he is very keen on, the difference between causes and symptoms, to ascertain whether people who marry enjoy the stable relationships which persist in cohabitation, and whether people who cohabit would, if they married, have short-lived relationships and experience the trauma of divorce. He cannot untangle that. I cannot untangle that. The statistics cannot untangle that. Therefore, there is not a lot of point in Government seeking to produce targets against which they are supposedly going to encourage parents to go into marriage in order to produce extra stability for the children. We do not disagree that each of these indicators, and twice as many more as the noble Lord has failed to mention, matter to the well-being of the child, but they are not part of the push of the Bill. They should not overburden it with things that are well intended, aspirational, cannot necessarily be measured and almost certainly cannot be delivered.