Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the right reverend Prelate because my remarks are going to cover some of the field as his. Amendment 23 asks the Government to commission research into minimum household income. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and my noble friend are aware that considerable research on this has already been published, mainly from three sources—we are awaiting the Bradford study. Those sources are the Family Budget Unit of the University of York, the Loughborough University Centre for Research in Social Policy and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where this work was initiated by the late Professor Jerry Morris. Because they all use slightly different methods of calculating minimum income standards, the recommendations from the three units are somewhat different. However, in one respect they all agree, which is that the incomes that they recommend are well above current benefit levels, some of which are extremely low and only just above subsistence level. It is not sufficient, as other noble Lords have said, in the 21st century, simply to use scales which cover subsistence living costs. Certain additional items are necessary for people, especially families with children, to engage in society and live healthy social lives as well as physically healthy lives. They may need items such as refrigerators, which are actually owned by 80 per cent of the population now. Of course, 50 years ago it was not an item which would be thought of to be included in minimum income. In addition there are other domestic hardware items, possibly a television, some components of travel costs, and other social necessities to help people engage in life, or lead a "dignified" life, as the noble Lord has put it, as was said in Germany. All these matters must be taken into account, and I think the Government do that to some extent, but not in a systematic way, when setting the level of benefits. The Government should work with the existing research units to achieve a consensus level of what is required, perhaps setting up a co-ordinating unit within the Child Poverty Commission to assess what should be minimum income standards. As the right reverend Prelate has said, this would be particularly relevant today in the month after the publication of the Marmot report, which gives a detailed account of the persistence of inequalities in health in the UK. The important finding in all of Professor Marmot’s work is that there is a continuous gradient throughout the social spectrum. A basic first step must be to ensure that support levels are more than just adequate; they must be sufficient to enable the poorest to engage in society so as to move up the poverty inequality scale.