Child Poverty Bill

I am completely confused by the noble Lord’s position and it is getting worse as we go on. At the beginning, the noble Lord was clear that he accepted the figure of 60 per cent and so on, and we argued why people below 40 per cent or 50 per cent had a gap between declared income and apparent expenditure, but he made it clear that he was not in any sense taking on the propriety of the figures. Does the noble Lord accept that the propriety of the figures as targets has absolutely nothing to do with whether they are justiciable under common law through case law? They are government targets. Either the noble Lord subscribes to the targets or, as he has increasingly done, particularly today, he is trying to give himself more and more wriggle room. This leaves some of us concerned that what the noble Lord will try to do, should he be in the position to take my noble friend’s place, is to put himself in a position where he can say that what really matters are the causes of poverty—addiction, alcohol abuse, worklessness, failure to get an education, poor parenting and so on—and, therefore, essentially, as those are the causes, the target of 60 per cent as a consequence matters far less. As a result, we can only tackle the causes—that is all that matters—and, lo and behold, these are all about the lack of moral fortitude on the part of parents; therefore we will morally re-educate the parent population. As a result—bingo—we will be free from the problem of transferring income or waiting for a recession to do it for us. The noble Lord has moved three, four or five steps in the course of the Bill and where he has ended up is far less satisfactory than where he started.