Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I shall quickly go through what I started with, on the basis that the listener absorbs half of what is said and remembers half of that—and that is doing well. The issue is socio-economic disadvantage, which is a nice-sounding expression, but I am genuinely puzzled as to what it means in a legislative context. Following on from that, when can a child say that he suffered or did not suffer socio-economic disadvantage? The guardian of the term socio-economic is, as best as I can tell, the Office for National Statistics. The definition has changed significantly over the years; in the last century—by which I mean the 20th century—we had two versions of "socio-economic". One was based on social class and occupations and the other on socio-economic groups. Early this century we changed to a new socio-economic classification, and this definition is, I presume, the legal basis on which this part of the clause rests. I am not sure that it does quite what is intended. The website for the Office for National Statistics states: ""The NS-SEC aims to differentiate positions within labour markets and production units in terms of their typical ‘employment relations’. Among employees, there are quite diverse employment relations and conditions, they occupy different labour market and work situations. Labour market situations equate to source of income, economic security and prospects of economic advancement"." It goes on to specify the subtlety of work relationships but then concludes: ""Not everything can be explained by what a classification directly measures, employment is not the only determinant of life chances"." So the formal classifications here would not seem to be very helpful in the context in which we are talking. Is the Minister taking us back to the last century with this definition? In other words, does the phrase mean only "economic and social disadvantage"? This would appear to be equally difficult to apply in practice. Given the slowing rate of social mobility, it would appear that being born, for instance, to parents who were in the lower classifications, however defined, would make it difficult for children to move to higher levels. Surely this cannot be what is meant. I seek to probe the Minister as to exactly what the term means in a legislative and judicial context. It is in this context that I seek to put some flesh on the bones. On some of my previous amendments, noble Lords have commented that I have been trying to put ornaments on a Christmas tree. My response to that is that if a clause is completely vague it serves a purpose to give it some definition. I have once again selected the four main factors, based on the research, which lead to poor outcomes for children. As the amendment states, these are: family breakdown, addiction, a lack of education and skills and persistent unemployment. I do not intend to go through them again as I laid out the rationale for them last week, albeit in the context of their use as formal targets rather than in the strategies clause. However, I shall revert to the issue of addiction. This category is different in kind to virtually all the others. Nearly all the categories of deprivation look at helping the whole household which contains children. This approach breaks down in the case of addiction. Here there is a divide between the interests of the children and what the parents are driven to spend funds on. It is absolutely no good to try to help children of addicted parents solely through financial transfers. As my noble friend Lord De Mauley said at Second Reading, this strategy would delight only the local drug dealer and off-licence outlet. There must be other strategies to help the children of addicts. Again this is not a marginal issue. According to the Centre for Social Justice, there are some 1.5 million children of addicts, and this number is likely to overlap considerably with the number of children who are classified as being in poverty. The poverty target for next year, as we all know, is 1.7 million children. I know that we are set to miss it but, nevertheless, it could well be that the vast majority of children left in poverty in the difficult decade we are entering are the children of people who are driven to divert resource away from supporting them. When the Minister responds I should like to learn two things from him. First, what is the formal meaning of "socio-economic" in this context? Secondly, what strategies will the Government adopt to help the children of the addicted? I beg to move.