Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I thought I provided a full response to this amendment in the first session last week and the noble Lord will forgive me if I reiterate what I said previously on this matter. First, I must emphasise that the Bill is about tackling income poverty, material deprivation and socio-economic disadvantage. All of these are important and are treated as such in the Bill. As I have explained many times, our aim is that children should not live in poverty in the UK or suffer the effects of wider socio-economic disadvantage. Ensuring a focus on income and material deprivation is central to that aim, as is taking action beyond financial poverty. I hope the noble Lord will accept this and that that matter, at least, is resolved. Amendment 49 proposes that to inform its child poverty strategy the Government should collect data on households with parents who are married, in a civil partnership or long-term relationship, and households where one or more parent is addicted to drugs, alcohol or gambling. I understand that the Office for National Statistics collects information on marital status. However, the causal link between this information and child poverty statistics is not clear cut. I imagine that information on levels of drugs, alcohol and gambling addiction would be rather harder to obtain. It is not clear, for example, at what point a habit becomes an addiction or, indeed, the extent to which this impacts on household income or on children’s well-being. I question, therefore, whether the information listed here is necessarily the most useful data to draw on in preparing a child poverty strategy and, indeed, whether it is appropriate to specify in legislation that these data are collected rather than any other data relating to the drivers of poverty. In previous debates we have made clear the importance we see in stable and committed relationships and the impact that that can have on children and their well-being. That should be clearly on the record. I am not quite sure what else the noble Lord seeks from the amendment. However, if I have misunderstood him, I shall happily have another go.