Child Poverty Bill

It is. There was a mistake on an earlier list; I had asked for it to be grouped with this one, but it mistakenly was not. The latest version shows that it is grouped. Besides, I can speak to it anyway, can I not? We now move on to Schedule 1, which is all about setting up the commission and its governance. My intention with these amendments is to ensure that the commission is as independent of government as possible. Schedule 1 shows that everyone on the commission is to be appointed by the Secretary of State. I ask you, how independent is that? What can we do about it? We can give Parliament some say in who the chair is to be. The chair will be a very influential person, so it is vital that he or she has expertise and can sometimes stand up and tell the Government something they may not want to hear. In Amendment 20 the noble Lord, Lord Freud, has specified exactly how Parliament should do this. I find it more appropriate in Amendment 19 to put down the principle that Parliament should approve the chairman and leave it to Parliament to decide how to do it. The second point in Amendment 21 is that the members should elect the deputy chair. I have a precedent for this: in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill, when the governance of Ofqual was being debated, the Government accepted a similar amendment from me for members to elect the deputy chair of Ofqual. I accept what the Minister said in response to this at Second Reading—that this body is not of the same sort as Ofqual. It is, however, just as important that it is independent. Indeed, the Government have committed themselves to it being independent, so why does the Secretary of State want total control over all the appointments? We might believe the Government when they say that the want the commission to be independent if they gave way on some of these amendments. Without such concessions, I am afraid that I will continue to believe that the Government want a cosy committee of their placemen. Let us see a little slack being cut here, and perhaps we will be a little more convinced. I beg to move.