Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, and I have a lot in common on this amendment. I, too, would like to see children brought up in families that are stable, steady, long lasting and loving. We could discuss whether that is called marriage or cohabitation. I, too, want to see families where the parents—or at least one of the parents, perhaps even both—are in work, are free of addiction and sufficiently educated to be able to help their children have roots and then take wing. I also want to see—I am puzzled that the noble Lord did not mention this—children brought up in households where they and their parents enjoy good physical and mental health and where there is no domestic violence or emotional abuse. I could go on. We could all treble that list of what we know helps improve the well-being of children in their family life. We do not disagree with any of that but with what should be in the Bill. That is the disagreement between us: not whether these things matter to children—they clearly do—but whether it is reasonable to talk about non-financial targets when in so many of these areas we are trespassing on a private life where the Government have no levers to pull. The noble Lord is quite right to say that two of those four targets, worklessness and education, are part of the Government’s strategy. There would not be any dispute between us that they are being pursued in other avenues and ways—we hope with increasing success. On keeping records of children who are brought up in relationships that are marriage, civil partnership or long-lasting cohabitation, is that "long-lasting" for three years, or five, or 10? What counts as a target? On addiction to gambling, drugs and alcohol, is that one bottle a week or 10? What about smoking? We know that half of all lone parents smoke and that because they smoke they are poor. Why is smoking not included? Those who saw that programme about MPs going to live temporarily for a week or so in flats saw that smoking could take up quite a lot of the disposable budget. Many of us might argue, "If only it was spent on fruit or yoghurt," but one is dealing with something beyond the reach of Government. How will the noble Lord define this? I really worry when the Front Bench spokesman on this tries to put in the Bill non-financial targets which the Government could monitor only with the most impertinent entry into family life. Even if they did that, they would still find it difficult to turn these into targets, which by definition have to be numerical. They have to assess something and have to put a figure to it. How much booze or gambling, how many cigarettes and drugs, and for how many years? If you are not careful, the Bill will not be about child poverty but remoralising the parents of those children who happen to be poor. The state is then going into the territory that child poverty is about the fecklessness of adults and using legislation to "send a message"—that is the usual vocabulary—that this sort of thing is undesirable, as though people who may exhibit these traits read the legislation. This is completely inappropriate for legislation. Nobody doubts the decency of the intent. Nobody is on the other side of the noble Lord, saying these things do not matter. Yet he gave it away himself. He quoted absolutely rightly—I would have produced this evidence if he had not—that those lone parents that go into poverty following, for example, a break-up of marriage or cohabitation, regain their status when they go into work. He also knows, as I have sent details of the research to him, that lone parenthood is often fairly highly correlated with young male unemployment. Get the young men into work and they become that much more marriageable or they go into long-term partnerships. Then the families may be stable. It is right that Government go down those avenues of creating work, encouraging people back into the labour market and making benefits conditional on them doing so. That is a proper route for the Government, as is education. If we get into counting the number of years in a relationship, does that include before he lived in the house, or only when he is living there? What about if he lives in the next-door house, or is semi-cohabiting? For heaven’s sake, surely no politician can believe it appropriate for these sorts of non-financial targets, however well-meaning, to be turned into something that can be counted and tracked in a Bill. That turns it into a war on the fecklessness of parents and imposes an ideology which is quite inappropriate and, frankly, rather impertinent.