Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with the amendments but also, I am afraid, some reservations and hesitations. The first amendment, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, focuses not just on diet—particularly, that of pregnant women—but on the wider range of adequate living standards. Looking again at households below average income on pages 68 and 69, where the full range of indicators of material deprivation are listed, I wonder why he feels that the Government have not adequately included that through material deprivation to reach the issue of sufficient budgetary standards. One could argue about sufficient generosity, but it seems that that test shows whether there is sufficient income to meet those standards of material deprivation which would suggest that someone is below adequate budgetary level. I wonder why he thinks that the HBAI stats and approach are not suitable for his concerns; while I obviously share those, I do not see why they are not good enough, although they could perhaps do with fine tuning over time. That is my first point; why do we not already have his considerations embedded in the Bill by virtue of material deprivation, which in turn piggy-backs on the HBAI 20 indicators? My second point is on pregnant women. I absolutely take on board the very well informed and expert views of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and my noble friend Lord Rea, so this is just a suggestion, as most benefit levels for pregnant women do not kick in until very late in pregnancy. The key thing that this Government were able to introduce—and all congratulations to my noble friend on it—was the Sure Start maternity grant, which is worth £500 over and beyond other benefits. The reason that it was done through Sure Start was to ensure that younger, single and potential lone parents had the enticement, if you like, of coming into maternity care in order to get their benefit. As I understand it, however—and I was just checking on this—we do not normally pay it until 11 weeks before an expected confinement. Is there any reason why my noble friend and, through him, the officials behind him, should not look at whether they could break that up into two payments of £250? One payment could come early enough, at the first signs of a confirmed pregnancy, so that there is a space of capital—that £250 or so would be in a box, over there—available for the more expensive items in a diet. Folic acid is very cheap, but other items could include fruit and vegetables, meat with iron and appropriate fish. We could do that at virtually no cost; so could my noble friend take that away? Could we make the Sure Start maternity grant more suitably match the dietary needs of pregnant young women, before 11 weeks before their confinement? My third question is, again, general. It is about budgetary standards and, again, goes back to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. Rereading Mike Brewer’s IFS report, what comes out very clearly is that over half of all children in long-term poverty never suffer hardship and that, overall, only about 3 to 4 per cent of children in long-term poverty suffer actual material deprivation or hardship at the same time. In other words, very simply, where two people have the same income and one is in hardship while one is not, that shows that that may be through debt, addiction or for a whole series of reasons.