Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I support this amendment. My noble friend Lord Northbourne has made his case powerfully and there is little I want to add beyond one or two points. The fourth of the proposed new subsections, ""the provision of education in schools on parenting and parent-child relationships," goes a long way towards achieving what is sought in the first three proposed new subsections. If children at school had any idea of the impact of a baby on their lives, and any idea of the impact on children of family break-up, the loss of the father and so forth, I think we could expect radical change. Surely we could expect to see the increased engagement of parents, long-term parental commitment and a reduction in the number of underage and unwanted pregnancies. There is a tremendous case for doing something on the education side in relation to parenting. I have to say that I find it quite remarkable that we have been teaching geography, history, biology and so on for all these years, but we do not teach parenting. All these subjects are important, but are they actually more important than the ability to parent a child? Clearly, they are not. We now have social and emotional health education in schools, but what do those classes focus on? They concentrate on sex, tobacco and alcohol. Again, these are important issues, but none in my view is as important as parenting. I know that the Bill is not about the curriculum, but nevertheless an effort of some kind to allude to the importance of these matters in the Bill is absolutely essential. I warmly welcome the amendment on the basis that poverty does not depend only on the amount of money coming through the door, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly said. It probably depends even more on the ability of the parents, first, to stay together so that there might be two incomes coming in, and secondly, to manage their resources in a warm, loving relationship and to run an effective household. So I strongly support the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, to the notion that we need parenting to be included in the Bill. It is fundamental to the partnership of sufficient money and good parents. If, before the Report stage, we could sit down and think about how this amendment might be reframed to achieve the objective we seek, that would be wonderful. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, would be more than happy to have such a discussion.