Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, has raised a very interesting question, which goes back to a much earlier debate in Committee about what weight we put on individual members of the family in calculating overall benefit. He is absolutely right to say that younger single people—single people of working age—have, relatively speaking, a poorer level of benefit than almost anyone else. Why is that? It is because the Government, from the beginning in 1997, has been concentrating on three strategies. The first was to help to lift pensioners out of poverty; and pensioners are no longer poorer than anyone else in society. The second was to tackle child poverty, especially through tax credits, which can compensate in a way that wages cannot for family size. The Government have been able to support children in poverty. The third was people with disabilities. Although that may not have gone as far as many of us would wish, none the less, the disability living allowance, introduced by a previous Government but built on by this one, together with additional disability benefits, has helped most disabled people out of poverty. Across society, I think that that leaves only single people of working age who have not had a similar uplift. Why is that? It is because, if they are not disabled, there is every assumption that the best strategy to help them out of poverty is to help them into the labour market. The Government’s whole strategy, from Jobcentre Plus onwards through the New Deals, and so on, has been to help those people into the labour market. The noble Lord himself said earlier that a pound earned for yourself is of far more value than a pound received from benefit. That is what the government strategy has been and I am sure the right one. Those who are dependent, rightly so, on the state—whether they are children, or pensioners or have disabilities—have had the upliftings of benefit. Those most able to help themselves, quite rightly, have had the support of the Government to help them to re-enter the labour market. That surely is the right strategy for the Government to employ.