Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Freud, for tabling this amendment, which has given us the chance for an interesting debate. Indeed, this is the first of a series of amendments that seek to specify additional areas that noble Lords believe should be covered or taken into account in developing the UK’s child poverty strategy. There was a significant debate in the other place on the nature of that strategy as required by Clause 8, particularly on whether the breadth of the areas to be considered in developing the strategy, as listed at subsection (5), is sufficient. Those issues are at the heart of this amendment and subsequent amendments. With that in mind, I shall take this opportunity to explain a little further the thinking behind the clause before I address this amendment. Building on analysis of the evidence of the drivers of poverty, our approach is to set out the broad aspirations to be followed in preparing a child poverty strategy for 2020. The aims are that while families are in work that pays, they have the support they need to progress; that financial support is responsive to family situations; that poverty in childhood does not translate into poor experiences and outcomes; and that children’s environments support them to thrive. Together, these aspirations will achieve the 2020 vision that no child will grow up in poverty and deprivation by 2020 or beyond. A child poverty strategy, as required by Clause 8, will need to consider measures in a number of policy areas that match those aspirations and encompass the main drivers of child poverty. Improving parental skills and employment and financial support for families with children will ensure that families have the resources that they need to lift their household income above the poverty line. Promoting children’s outcomes in health, education, childcare and social services, while improving the quality of housing and local area facilities and services and promoting social inclusion will help to break intergenerational cycles of poverty. The policy areas set out in Clause 8 closely match the building blocks set out in the consultation document Ending Child Poverty: Making It Happen. Those policy areas were chosen through detailed analysis of the main barriers to eradicating child poverty, and through extended discussion and consultation with stakeholders inside and outside government. Some of those areas directly impact on the resources of families now; others impact on the development of today’s children, who will be the parents of tomorrow. We have deliberately set out the main areas of policy in broad terms in subsection (5) to allow the strategy to respond to changing circumstances between now and 2020. Part of the task in developing the strategy will be to consider what specific measures are needed in each area. We are carrying out a thorough review of the evidence base to help us understand the causal pathways and identify how different sets of policies can contribute to the 2020 target. That will ensure that the strategy tackles the root causes as well as the symptoms of child poverty, preventing poverty occurring now and in future. The Bill deliberately avoids being too prescriptive about the content of the strategy. Clause 8 specifies a number of broad areas, encompassing the main drivers of child poverty, which we would expect a child poverty strategy to address. It does not specify detailed policies that the strategy must contain; such specificity would not be appropriate, as each three-year strategy will need to respond to changing circumstances between now and 2020 and build on evidence about what works in tackling child poverty. It is envisaged that more specific measures will be considered, as appropriate, in each three-year phase. Amendment 28 includes in the Bill consideration of the UK’s performance on the UNICEF child well-being measure compared with other OECD countries. The amendment targets the UK’s ranking in future UNICEF reports on child well-being. The UK’s performance in the 2007 report has been raised previously by a number of noble Lords and was raised again today by the noble Lord, Lord Freud. As I made clear, the report highlighted some significant challenges for children’s well-being in the UK. However, much of the data in the report were old and did not provide an accurate picture of what it was like to grow up in the UK in 2007. Let me explain why Amendment 28 is not appropriate. First, introducing targeting and index-ranking in the way the amendment seeks to do would create perverse incentives to focus on improving the UK’s score rather than on addressing important practical issues in improving child well-being. Secondly, there continue to be problems with the data that UNICEF uses—namely the health and behaviour of schoolchildren data from 2001-02. This source collects data from England, Wales and Scotland only and omits Northern Ireland, so it cannot be used to construct a complete picture of child well-being in the UK. The UNICEF child well-being measurement index aggregates across six dimensions of well-being to provide an overall country score. A report published by the OECD in September 2009 also conducted an international comparison across different dimensions of child well-being but did not aggregate countries’ scores into a single index. The OECD report cautions against the creation of an overarching index given that there is little theory to guide how aggregation should take place, and also because it masks varied performance across dimensions for different countries. There are also differences in data availability across countries and any league table or ranking cannot fully account for them. Given different data availability across countries, there is a risk in all international comparisons that countries that have relatively better data collection in place are penalised because of their ranking. Given this, I hope that the noble Lord will agree that the amendment does not propose an appropriate focus for the child poverty strategy, which is what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend Lady Hollis said in their powerful contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, referred to the fact that the UK is at the bottom of the child well-being index in the UNICEF report. Certainly part of the data on which the report was based relates to 2005-06. He referred to voters being asked whether they would prefer to be top of a well-being table or to be top of an income target that had been met. The two are not mutually exclusive and to pose it in that way, as my noble friend Lady Hollis said, is to create a misconception. We had a disagreement the other day about whether this is all leading to the saying that the income targets are not important and that you would not adhere to them. I accept that the noble Lord said that he signs up to the targets in the Bill in the same way that we do, and that is to be welcomed. Whatever definitions we use, it is absolutely clear that unless a household has a decent income, persistent and grinding poverty will pervade. That is why it is important that we stay focused. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, again questioned the description of the Bill. However, described as it is, it creates the focus that we want. My noble friend Lady Massey referred to the four nations report. I have not perused it, but I am encouraged to do so by her comments. Having said that, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.