Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for not malignly interpreting the motives behind the amendment. That was not the case on the first occasion that the issue was discussed. This is not intended to be a penny-pinching measure; in fact, it would probably achieve the exact opposite. The figures are very interesting. The Minister said that £80 million is being spent to support families at risk of this problem. When you consider that a large proportion of the families we are concerned about might be in this category, the £80 million that we are devoting to supporting them in this way must be compared with a potential £19 billion cost of supporting families in poverty purely by income transfers—that is the IFS estimate. As noble Lords know, Frank Field from another place estimates that the cost is higher at £30 billion. Putting this concern in the Bill in the shape of this amendment would start to get rationality into an analysis of where we should be spending the money. On the one hand it is suggested that we can solve the problem with £19 billion of income transfers; on the other, here is an effective set of pilots with a figure of £80 million. That is nothing against £19 billion. You start to get better decisions if you look at these things in that context. We argue that addiction is an enormous problem when you see the relevant figures. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for the fascinating information about the treatment processes in this country. She asked whether we should include smoking. I thought very hard about including smoking in the addictions. I did not do so for two reasons. First, I think that to do so would be too emotive. Secondly, alcohol and other drugs have a dual effect: a financial effect and a directly deleterious effect within a family in terms of the parents’ likely relationship with the children. As always, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for his thoughtful and often inspired views in this area. He said that this is a very difficult issue. I acknowledge that that is true; it is very difficult. This is one of the major social problems in this country. That is why it is valuable to put a forcing mechanism in a Bill such as this so that we put effort and diligence into trying to solve it. The cost arguments only stand if the problem is a small, marginal one. If it is of central importance—that is what I am arguing—the fact that it is difficult and expensive to tackle does not really stand. We should spend that money and make those efforts if this is the central part—or one of the central parts—of the problem. This is an important issue and I am sure we will come back to it in many ways and guises in the years to come. I wanted to air it fully.