Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to prevent the targets creating perverse effects through the economy. There are already signs of this beginning to happen. The issue is that if disproportionate resources are concentrated on families with children, it may be at the expense of other groups such as single people, childless couples and pensioners, many of whom will be equally vulnerable. However, these groups will not have the benefit of the protection of a statutory target, whereas households with children will. It is worth pointing out that many single people and childless couples will go on to have children. There are two issues around that. We discussed one, which is that women in poverty who do not have adequate nutrition because they are too poor may pass on poor effects to their foetuses at a very early stage of their development. As we heard on Monday from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, support must go in very early in pregnancy: it is no good having it later. The second impact of this is that if the single people and childless couples have been allowed to remain in poverty until that point, it is likely that the child will be significantly disadvantaged, because one does not eradicate years of poverty with a sudden wave of the fiscal—or indeed any other—wand. This is the weakness of conflating two concepts into one, in order to conjure up the snappy concept of child poverty: poverty in general, as it affects everyone in the economy, and child well-being, which we discussed earlier in the week. There are already worrying signs of distortion in the support system as a result of the Government’s strategies to meet the targets over the past decade. I would not be surprised to learn that recent measures will stretch the figures still more, when we have had the chance to examine their effect in the round. In 2007-08, the minimum support for a childless couple was 32 per cent below the poverty definition used in the Bill—which, as noble Lords know, is 60 per cent of the median income. This compares with a figure of 4 per cent for households of a lone parent with one child. A single individual would stand at 22 per cent below the poverty line on the same basis, while a couple with two children would do somewhat better at only 15 per cent below the line. I am using the revised figures prepared by the House of Commons Library. It is noteworthy that independent commentators are saying that we are coming to the end of this process of stretching. The Rowntree report entitled Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2009 asked how much further the Government can go with their policy of increasing child tax credit and child benefit well in excess of inflation. It found that the rises in child tax credit and child benefit have, ""completely altered the pattern of support provided by Social Security"." This year, the maximum income support for two children is about £130 per week—£30 more than for a working-age couple. Ten years ago, two children would have got only 81 per cent of the couple’s figure. The report finds that, ""strictly speaking, children in workless households are now in poverty because adult benefits are too low"." The report concludes: ""As far as we can tell, the argument for the much bigger rises in child benefits acknowledges no external point of reference other than the need to progress towards the child poverty goal as ‘cheaply’ as possible"." Given the historically unprecedented differential between child and adult benefits that now prevails, this is no longer enough. Instead, we must look at the system of social security benefits in the round and decide how their values should stand in relation to one another. This is the issue that my amendment seeks to address. I beg to move.