Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I have no objection to the amendment but I should like to take this opportunity to talk about the commission and its make-up. I hope this legislation will encourage recruitment from communities where there is deprivation and where there are men and women who have experienced the terrible poverty that exists throughout our country. In the poorer areas of the city of Glasgow a person is lucky if they become a justice of the peace; it is in the west end of Glasgow that you will see appointments to commissions. I do not mean to be disrespectful, but that is where the academics live. They also live in certain parts of Edinburgh, and noble Lords will know of other areas where good, clever people live. However, the commission will need not only good, clever people but men and women of good will who have experienced the terrible poverty of deprived communities. I am sick and tired of the media talking about areas of multiple deprivation as though everyone in such communities is helpless—they are not. If you were to visit Glasgow, I could take you to see men and women who have set up disablement groups. There would be a lot of lonely disabled people if it was not for one woman, in particular, who created an organisation which now delivers meals to disabled and housebound people; it has a meeting place where people can come together and talk about their problems, enjoy themselves and arrange holidays. These are the achievements of people who live in these so-called areas of multiple deprivation. However, when appointments are made to what we used to call quangos—I do not know whether they are still called that—people from areas where the problems are being experienced are passed by. The Bill will be a failure unless we appoint people to the commission who can say, "That problem will not be resolved if you handle it in that way". To give a comparison, it was written into the legislation on the Electoral Commission—about which I have some experience—that no one who was involved politically could be a member of the Electoral Commission. This meant that former Labour, Liberal and Conservative Party agents could not be on the commission and lend the years of experience they had gained from hands-on work in the communities such as delivering leaflets and arranging to get people to the polls. We wrote into the legislation that we could not use these people, who had a lifetime of experience, and so what did we get? We got former returning officers from local government who did not know what it was to go into a housing estate to deliver a leaflet and meet a Doberman standing in the garden which would not let you do so; and if you got past the Doberman you had to look out for the Rottweiler on the other side of the door. The point I make about this commission, which I wish to put on record, is that if we do not appoint to it people who live in these communities and who have a proven record of helping themselves, their communities and their neighbours—and there are many of them—we will have failed.