Child Poverty Bill

Like both speakers so far in this debate, I welcome this group of amendments that their Lordships have put before us today. I am also pleased that the Government have accepted them and are not opposing them. Many of the points that I want to make have been made already, including the importance of consulting the children directly. I am grateful to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for highlighting my amendment to that effect, which he was kind enough to support. However, I do wonder slightly why what was a bad idea in November is now a good one in March and April. It would be terribly churlish of me to complain when an idea that we supported is accepted by the Government, but it raises an issue in my mind about the point of the Committee stage. The Minister has accepted that these are fairly good ideas, but it is a little frustrating when ideas that are put forward in a moderate way and with a broad degree of consensus are rejected almost for the sake of it. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that in the next term of Government that he serves, and that he will perhaps be a bit more responsive to future amendments. I welcome the recognition of the role of grandparents and other carers, and Grandparents Plus and other organisations have done a great job in raising our awareness of these issues. I know that they will look forward to ongoing discussion with the Government and local authorities about how the amendments are implemented in future. I reflected on why the Conservatives were so enthusiastic about the 2010 target and the associated report. I assumed that they hope that some putative future Conservative Administration will be able to use the report to use as something to beat what they hope will then be the Opposition with. The Conservatives are unlikely to be doing so well on child poverty themselves by that point, so they will at least want to be able to say that the other lot were worse—