Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his amendment; I will be brief in responding to it. The amendment requires that, in preparing the UK strategy, the Secretary of State must consider the impact that any measure taken will have on "other people" in poverty. We debated this amendment at Committee, as the noble Lord acknowledged. As I said then, it cannot be the remit of the child poverty strategy to consider the impact of every proposed measure on other groups that may be living in poverty. However, the Secretary of State will not be able to take policy and spending decisions on measures to prevent and tackle child poverty in isolation. Indeed, such decisions will be taken in the round and through prioritisation at key fiscal events, including the Pre-Budget and Budget Reports, and Departmental Spending Reviews. This addresses the issues and strategies that my noble friend Lady Hollis referred to. In addition, the Bill already includes a better safeguard than the noble Lord proposed in his amendment. Clause 15 requires the likely impact of any measure on the economy and on taxation, public spending and public borrowing to be taken into account by the Secretary of State when preparing a UK strategy and by the commission when considering any advice to be given to the Secretary of State or the devolved Administrations. The effect is to require the commission and UK, Scottish and Northern Ireland Ministers to have regard to budgetary constraints and value for money in developing and advising on strategies. This will necessarily need to balance the impact of any measures on other policy areas and priority groups. I hope the noble Lord is reassured by this. However, I make no apologies that this Bill aims to tackle child poverty and focuses firmly on measures aimed directly at the child, putting their needs first. Requiring in law that the child poverty strategy must consider every impact on every "other group" would be the wrong approach and would not help us to reach our goal of ending child poverty. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.