Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for saying that this is about the informal sector, in which people of all colours participate. I want to make two points. First, the informal sector is the most insecure and uncertain sector in the economy. My understanding is that risk-taking is encouraged, and many people use tax avoidance in order to balance risk-taking. However, the greatest risk-takers are those at the very bottom, who take risks all the time. It seems to me that there is disproportionality there. In terms of equality, it is simply unequal to guess someone’s tax. There is a wide range of literature on the moral economy of kin, whereby people do not pay one another and have been working for generations on the basis of recognition of their responsibilities and duties, which are reciprocal. This means that, to help their kin, people in very poor households often offer all kinds of care, including, not least, accommodation where the housing is very tight. The kind of guesstimates that would apply to the tax avoidance category would certainly discriminate against people who are doing their very best to ensure that their children do well. That is particularly true of migrant families, who forgo everything in order to offer their children a good education. Therefore, they might appear to be better off but we do not know the hardship that they go through in the hope that the next generation will fare better. I am sure that we do not want to discourage people who are doing their best to improve their situation.