Child Poverty Bill

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. I will go through the Centre for Social Justice’s argument. In a year, only 30,000 children under five are affected by the separation of married couples, while 90,000 children are affected by the separation of cohabiting couples. This is despite the fact that—again, speaking from memory—only 16 per cent of couples with children cohabit; the rest are married. The vast majority of this problem derives from the breaking up of cohabiting parents. That is where the problem is. It is not a matter of morals or moral fibre to look at the situation and say that it is very dangerous. The Centre for Social Justice goes on to provide analysis in its Dynamic Benefits report and the Green Paper that it put out last week. It has assessed the average material couple penalty to be £1,336 per year.