Child Poverty Bill

The noble Baroness has put her finger on a tremendously important point: increasing income will solve the problem in certain cases, but not in others. Can the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, indicate what his recommendations would cost the Exchequer as against the recommendations being made in the Bill? The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, placed emphasis on pregnant women and the nutrition of children in utero. Not being a specialist on the subject, I can only say that I support the principle behind it. I do not know whether we have any scientists here; I think that they are probably mostly social scientists. Should we not seriously look also at the nutrient value of food? Scientific technology now can do amazing things; for instance, a breeding programme is aiming to achieve—and, I believe, is achieving—much higher protein values in maize, which is important in nutrition in many third world countries. It sounds frivolous, but if we could make potato chips nutritious, we would have it made—we would not need any more money.