Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I touched on this issue in my earlier amendment covering non-financial targets, which I withdrew after it was not accepted by the Government. I make no apology for raising this particular aspect again in a different context. This is a difficult and complicated problem. At its heart is the simple proposition that income transfers to a household in which there is an addict parent need to be carefully controlled if our purpose is to help the children. A quick glance at the numbers tells us that if we do not tackle this issue effectively, the whole Bill will become a futile exercise. As I said in Committee, according to Breakdown Britain: ""Around 1.5 million children are growing up in substance-abusing households—over a million with parents abusing alcohol and … 350,000 where there is drug-taking"." Now, 1.5 million children is not far short of the number that are targeted to be still living in poverty this year—1.7 million. I know the Government are unlikely to achieve this target. I could find no data on the overlap between children living in poverty and those whose parents are substance abusers, but the overlap must be very considerable. What is the point of making incredible endeavours and spending great sums to support poor children when many of them, maybe the majority of them, will see no benefit whatsoever from all that effort? In Committee, I drew noble Lords’ attention to what seems to be a substantial divide between the Government and my party, on the relevance of drug addiction in particular. It is worth quoting again the key part of the evidence provided in another place by Charlotte Pickles of the Centre for Social Justice. She said that, ""by skewing a policy response towards increasing benefits to pull that … family … over the poverty threshold, you are not improving that child's life in any way, shape or form ... I ... refute the fact that at the moment we have sufficient, or even nearly adequate, services for tackling addiction".—[Official Report, Commons, Child Poverty Bill Committee, 22/10/09; col. 86.]" In the Grand Committee, some noble Lords opposed this amendment on the grounds that it could be used to cut benefit to families where there is a person dependent on drugs. There were also claims that children would have less protection if a family member was an addict. Let me make it absolutely clear that this is completely the opposite of the purpose and indeed the wording of the amendment. It imposes a duty on the Secretary of State to take the problem of children living in such households into account, in ways that noble Lords would, and indeed did, wholeheartedly support. The Minister argued in his response in Committee that the words "disproportionate" or "likelihood" in my amendment were unclear legally. This baffles me entirely, coming from a Minister who is happy to take the common-sense meaning of the expression "socio-economic disadvantage". If he wants to help the children of addicted parents, I am happy to accept a redraft of the principle of the amendment in language which he would find legally acceptable. I am not claiming to have a solution today, or to be imposing one with this amendment. That is not the point. I am seeking to make sure that the issue is front and centre in the battle against child poverty; that measures to tackle the problem take it fully into account; that we have a dynamic to find strategies to reduce the number of addicted parents; and, finally, that money and resources get to the children whom the Bill is meant to support. I beg to move.