Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I listened with interest to the way the noble Lord, Lord Freud, introduced his amendment and I am much reassured. My instinct, like that of other noble Lords, was that this was some attempt to cut benefit levels. He says that that is not the purpose of the amendment. Indeed, it is not its stated purpose if you read the wording literally. However, there are still concerns about how you approach this massive problem. The noble Lord is absolutely right to raise it and I support his attempts both here and in Grand Committee to do so. All my experience—and I have some through working with the Wise Group in Glasgow—is that if you try to take drug-addicted members of families on against their wishes and against the grain of their willingness to co-operate, you run into all sorts of difficulties. Contrariwise, there are things that can be done to encourage people to consider support in a positive way. If they get to the position mentally of agreeing to accept assistance, you can make a huge difference, as long as you have the support available right there at the same time as the penny drops in the drug-addicted mind. If you get to that position, it is no use sending them off to the National Health Service, where they will wait for a year and a half to get treatment. I am absolutely at one with the noble Lord if he is saying that we need to get whatever package of support is needed to somebody who is in the state of mind to say, "I am now willing to give it my best shot to get into a better place". If it is a question of people training themselves—and getting the support to train themselves—out of the difficulties that they are in with drug addiction, I am with him. However, it is very difficult for Governments to pick and choose who is in that condition and who is not. If you apply a kind of Jobcentre Plus-approach equally to everybody, you will run into all sorts of difficulties. A recalcitrant drug addict is in a place that is altogether destructive of any attempts at support. It is a very hard problem. I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling the amendment. I am still fearful about how it would be implemented, but the discussion should certainly continue. It is something that the Government should give further thought to during the rest of the passage of the Bill.