Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, for his amendment, and to other noble Lords who have contributed. In large measure, we are on the same page in all this. We recognise that we have a challenge and that there are a group of people that we need to support if we are going to tackle child poverty. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said that we know that we can make a difference. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Massey for her updated knowledge about the increase in people who are undertaking treatment now that it takes only three weeks to access treatment, not the 18 months that it used to a while ago. The amendment would, in effect, require the Secretary of State to carry out an analysis of the likelihood of any particular member of the household spending a disproportionate amount of money on an addiction. That would be an onerous and impractical task. I will mention again that it is unclear legally what "disproportionate" or "likelihood" mean in this context. Furthermore, the overarching intention behind the amendment is not clear. The noble Lord himself said that we do not necessarily have all the solutions. I acknowledge that. All the amendment requires is that the likelihood is assessed. It does not state what happens if a likelihood of disproportionate spending on an addiction is discovered. If it resulted in financial provision being withheld from that household then I would contend that this would increase the risk of poverty. However, I accept and understand the assurances from the noble Lord that this is not the intent of his approach. Clearly it is right for us to be concerned about households with high expenditure on drugs, alcohol or other addictive substances. Indeed, we know that parents’ drug and alcohol use can harm children at all stages of development. That is why the Government are investing almost £80 million in 2009-10 to support families at risk through the Think Family programme. We have given parents with drug problems priority access to treatment, as well as supporting a network of family self-help groups to develop across the country. The child poverty family intervention pilots are also testing the effectiveness of the family intervention pilot model with a wider range of families experiencing barriers to training and employment, including drug and alcohol misuse. While it is too early to fully evaluate the effect of these pilots, evidence from the first 699 families to complete the intervention suggests that substance misuse problems decreased from 32 per cent to 17 per cent, and alcoholism decreased from 28 per cent to 12 per cent. This amendment could in fact result in providing a direct financial incentive for households with a member suffering from addiction to spend more recklessly on drugs and alcohol in order to receive more financial support from the taxpayer, but I do not believe that that was not the thrust that the noble Lord was following. He referred to the fact that there are 1.5 million children growing up in substance-abusing households, more than a million with parents abusing alcohol and 350,000 in households where there is drug-taking. I do not refute the figures that he cites, though I point out that dependency or abuse is not necessarily the same as addiction. While the poorest local authorities tend to have the highest levels of negative health and social outcomes related to alcohol use, it is not clear that addiction to harmful substances is the main driver of poverty. Indeed, poverty and the stress it can cause are more likely to contribute to an addiction problem rather than the other way round. The root causes of poverty are more likely to be those listed in Clause 8(5). Therefore, I suggest that there is a risk here that the noble Lord is looking at the symptoms rather than the causes of poverty. I hope on reflection that he will not press the amendment.