Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, once again I have a great deal of sympathy with the noble Baroness’s concern that financial targets do not become a wholly inadequate proxy for assessing the well-being and deprivation of children. As I noted when I responded to her Amendment 2, many costs are unavoidable for some families but not others, which will inevitably lead to significant differences between different families on exactly the same nominal income. I hope that the Minister will confirm that the Bill allows for discretion on whether disability benefit must be accounted for in the definition of household income. As I understand it, while household income is specifically defined in Clause 6, there is nothing to prevent a future Government ensuring that the regulations follow the noble Baroness’s amendment. Is that the case? If so, I should prefer to see remain the flexibility as currently drafted. There is already too much prescription in the Bill on what constitutes an acceptable income for widely differing families, and I should not want tie the Government’s hands to a potentially inaccurate equivalisation formula.