Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, on the latter point, I cannot give an answer off the top of my head. However, I will ask the team to go away and see if we can lose the noble and learned Baroness’s £5, although she did make a fair point. I will try first to unpick the issue of data. I will deal with the data on which the targets that form part of the Bill are based, namely the households below average income surveys. As I tried to explain, the surveys do not differentiate who the adults are in the family when the data are collected. Therefore, it is not possible to look at the surveys in the same way as we do for measuring targets, and identify kinship care arrangements: it does not flow from the data. There is a separate point about the general need for data: one recognises that. Work is under way, as I have said. I am happy to reflect on my noble friend's suggestion about whether we could do anything more specific in the Bill to drive that more formally. I cannot commit to that, but I take the point. However, I would separate it from relying on the households below average income survey, which produces the targets, and assuming that it will provide this source of data; because, without significant amendments to the survey, it would not. I do not know whether amendment of the survey is possible: it would certainly be costly, and there may be other implications. I hope that I have explained the issues around data. Local authorities are enjoined to produce local strategies. They are required to undertake a needs assessment. One would expect them to be in a strong position to assess the needs of children in poverty in their area. I hope that I have said that, as part of the process, regulations and guidance will be issued to local authorities in this area. We need to see how that guidance might be used to focus on the issues that have been raised this afternoon, so that when local authorities devise their strategies and act on them, these things are at the heart of the strategies. That was the purpose of those comments: there was no suggestion of writing to local authorities in the interim on the basis that my noble friend suggested. I am not sure about the scope of the investment banking activities of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, or about what he did with the spreadsheets that he produced on what seemed to be a fairly broad-brush basis. Perhaps it was practices like that which led us into the financial crisis that has beset us across the globe. However, the point here is one that my noble friend Lady Hollis touched on. We do not have the data for the numbers involved; and even if we did, we have no detailed work on what sort of rate per week would be appropriate as a payment to kinship carers, and on what other considerations might be taken into account. The work that is being done as a result of the Green Paper on family relationships and support, and the further studies that I referred to, would be the basis on which to produce that information. Producing a few figures on a few pieces of paper in the short term would not help us very much. I hope that we share the broad principle that addressing poverty and making sure that all children are able to flourish and have decent living standards is a sound investment for government. That is at the heart of the Bill.