Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, this amendment would ensure that account is taken of the costs associated with disability, either by excluding disability benefit from the measurement of income or by taking account of the costs of disability. The words in the amendment would be added to the end of the sentence which explains what "equivalised" means in relation to household income, so that account would be taken not just of variations in household size and composition but also the costs associated with disability. We have just had a debate about equivalent scales. I acknowledge immediately that the whole business of equivalising incomes to take account of the costs of disability is not easy. People’s living standards are measured by their income and if there is a disabled person in the house the weekly income is likely to include disability living allowance, which is a non means-tested benefit. I declare an interest as I receive it. DLA is awarded for the higher costs of keeping mobile, if one is disabled, and for extra care, so it should reasonably be discounted as part of ordinary disposable income because it is not spent on what an able-bodied person would spend disposable income on. However, the figures are surprising in that it turns out that there is not much difference in the number and percentage of children in relative poverty, using income figures that include and exclude DLA. Why is this? We all know that the costs of disability are often high and that families with either a disabled adult or disabled child, even with disability living allowance and possibly attendance allowance, are poorer. Perhaps the poorer families do not claim these benefits as much as better-off families do. I have spoken before many times about the daunting process of applying for DLA, even with the simpler forms. One has only to look at some statistics appertaining to disability. Just to repeat a few that I mentioned at Second Reading, families with disabled children are more than 50 per cent likely to be in debt; only 16 per cent of mothers with disabled children work, in comparison with 62 per cent of mothers with non-disabled children; and one in six families with disabled children goes without essentials, such as food and heating, due to lack of money. I fully accept that at the moment there is no agreed way in which to equivalise income to take account of the costs associated with disability, but we should surely know which are the households with children in which someone has a disability. If just knocking off someone’s disability benefits is not possible when assessing household income, should we not have a process to scale disability, such as happens with the numbers of people in the household and their ages? We should not just leave the whole question of the cost of disability to the material deprivation indicator, although I have an amendment to Clause 8 that would cover disability. This is an important matter, even if it is a difficult one, and I should be glad to hear if the Minister can give me any comfort. I beg to move.