Child Poverty Bill

I thank the Minister for his response, although I confess that I disagree with it. This Government came in with a range of top-down targeting methodologies, which they found counterproductive. As a result, they have been forced to loosen that targeting structure. One of the ways that they have done so—probably the most important—is by giving a choice of targets to local areas, as well as the freedom to achieve their selection of targets. That is the kind of freedom that is much more likely to come from our Benches. We will wish to move that freedom further, I have no doubt; we do not believe that a rigid top-down targeting approach is the right way to run a country. The point of the amendment is to give some more freedom to local authorities, within the context of an imposed target for child poverty, to structure their own strategies on how to deal with it in terms of which people they will work with. It will not make one iota of difference to the partnerships and the working relationships on the ground to give them some freedom in whom they work with and whom they emphasise; all you risk by having an absolute number of relationships inflexibly imposed from above is, as I have said, a duty then to start ticking the boxes and say, ““Yes, I have talked to this other partner organisation””.