Child Poverty Bill

A few amendments back the noble Lord was arguing exactly—and correctly—the opposite. That is, in the equivalence scales, couples are overestimated compared to single people, including lone parents, because the scales use an 8:6 ratio for the first and second person in a couple, whereas the OECD uses 100 per cent and 50 per cent. The noble Lord rightly said that the OECD figures were probably more accurate. In other words, far from there being a couple penalty in the benefit system, the noble Lord himself was arguing the opposite: couples were overweighted in the benefit system, based on his information and research on the equivalence scales.