Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, on his amendment and the sub-headings within it. I was interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Freud, had to say. As someone who has been very happily married for 42 years, I have no argument against marriage, but I know that it is not always the case that when there is a married couple with children, those children are always happy. There are some situations, which we know through our own families, in which, because the couple stay together, the children are very unhappy indeed, because there can be family arguments and all sorts of tension within the house. Children at a very young age can pick up the tensions within the household, even if the arguments take place after the children go to bed. So we have to watch what we say when we suggest that with married couples everything is fine, but with unmarried girls and single parents, that is not so good. I had cases when I was a Member of Parliament. Often a girl would come to me and talk about housing and what a bad time she was getting from the husband, who was a bully and a rascal. Sometimes, the bullying is not necessarily about lifting their hand to a woman. Sometimes it is verbal bullying.