Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for moving the amendment and in particular for indicating that he would accept my Amendment 14. There has been some useful meeting of minds in this area and I am glad we have found some points of consensus, at least across these two sets of Benches. Amendment 14 might seem a very small point, but this is a declaratory Bill and I feel that it is important to get the message out that the Secretary of State is taking support for mental health as seriously as for physical health. Similarly, I am appreciative of Government amendment 13. Since Grand Committee I have had the opportunity to learn more about the thinking of the Government’s Child Poverty Unit, and I am not now surprised that we have consensus on this issue. Labour and the Conservatives might continue to disagree on the importance of stable, two-parent households to a child’s well-being, but at least we share the same concern for the relationship between the parents and the child. Explicitly allowing for attention to be given to parenting skills will be a useful addition to the Bill. We support Amendment 15, too, as a useful reminder for the Government to keep their focus on those children who most need support. Despite my continuing reservations about the imprecision of the term "socio-economic disadvantage"—which we have perhaps discussed enough—I appreciate the Minister’s attempts to meet our concerns about the need to ensure that those groups of children particularly at risk of poverty and material deprivation are given proper attention. By identifying and focusing on the types of household which are most at risk of suffering material deprivation, the Government will, we hope, be led to consider and address the causes, not the symptoms, of poverty. As I have repeatedly said during these debates, it is not enough to stick a plaster over the difficulties experienced by many living in vulnerable households by means of direct financial transfers. The Government must concentrate on removing the circumstances that lead people into that vulnerability. The Minister has gone to some effort to improve this clause, with some success. I thank him for his constructive efforts in making the drafting clearer and more precise.