Child Poverty Bill

Is the noble Lord arguing that couples should get more than they do currently, or is he saying that the couple rate is correct and that the lone parent rate is too high? It is not the case that the financial penalty breaks up a couple because they decide that they are better off living apart but none the less have an intimate relationship. First, it is not worth, say, a lone parent with a couple of children by another father having a boyfriend living in the house if, as a result, her benefit goes down, particularly if the boyfriend is unemployed. Again I say, with reference to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, thank goodness for that, because the key perpetrator of much family domestic abuse and violence is the live-in, quasi-stepfather who is not the biological father of the children. The noble Lord has to disentangle the issues far more than he is doing. If, when a couple break up, they simply get half the couple’s rate, then, as my noble friend Lord McKenzie says, that is not enough to form two separate households. If the noble Lord is going to allow them enough to form two separate households, there will be a significant cost implication, and he has to look at that. However, in practice things happen the other way round: it is not that couples break up because of the financial problem; it is that couples who have a sexual relationship none the less do not cohabit in a household because of the benefit penalty, and that has some real pluses in terms of child protection. Better a lone parent than a stepfather.