Child Poverty Bill

Again, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar. I am slightly hesitant because I cannot quite place who it was, but I think it was an analysis by the Child Poverty Action Group that came out very clearly showing this balance between the different values of pounds. I will come back with a precise reference on that when we next meet. What we are driving at is that it is perfectly possible to have measures of some of the things that are most closely correlated with poverty. It may be that we do not have them well enough yet but over a 10-year span it is perfectly possible to build that evidence base, whether it is on how many people are addicted and to what or on other issues. If they are addicted, it is not just a question of saying, "Ooh, they are addicted," and the figure has gone up or down; one needs to develop strategies to reduce the figures. We may find that the most effective way of doing that is to put a large number of treatment centres in to try to solve particular problems that come up on the key factors that correlate with poverty. That is the reason. The financial targets do two things: they are targets and they are manipulable. You can do things with income transfers. The IFS has told us that if you were to do it purely through income transfers it would cost £19 billion in 2020. I think that is an underestimate. I have seen other estimates of £30 billion to do that. We risk having an unbalanced Bill because we have only the financial targets; we do not have this balancing set of targets based on the real causes of poverty. There is a difference between us and I am happy to acknowledge it.