Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I take issue with the idea which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, put forward that this was essentially an impertinent and intrusive set of requirements from the state on individual parents and others. One can collect such survey data in exactly the same way as one can collect survey data on income. This is not focusing on individual parents and keeping those data; it is carrying out a survey. We already have a lot of the information, for instance, on the type of family formation so it is not a huge extra burden. I think it is even in the HBAI as it stands, which goes through the types of family that there are. The data will not be an extra intrusion to collect. This amendment does not aim to send a moral message to anyone; it does something quite different. It requires the state to develop strategies which underpin the things we know help to reduce poverty. As I said when I introduced the amendment, it may not be exactly the right grouping but there are probably no more than one or two more than the four types of household that we put forward in this amendment which are critical in allowing families to pull themselves out of poverty rather than relying on the state to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked about the levers for stability—what can one do? The Minister referred to incentives for married people in the tax system. There is a much simpler lever—the effective couple penalty in the benefits and tax credits system, which runs at about £1,300 a year for couples. That is why the data show that there seem to be 200,000 more single parents than there really are. According to the IFS, people need to misrepresent their circumstances because of the perverse nature of the support system at that level.