Child Poverty Bill

Hitherto we have debated the Schleswig-Holstein question, and tonight we have the Bedfordshire question. I hope, in anticipation of a note from the Official Reporters, that they know how to spell the former, because I certainly do not. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) rightly asked how middle school pupils will fare. I assume that the cut-off point will be as per that for primary school pupils, but we will wait to see what the answer is. The intervention by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) was interesting because, in a sense, this is about a contrast between our saying, "Wouldn't it be nice if this happened?", and his being about to support, I assume, with the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, something that makes the problem that he describes worse. That is the paradox, is it not? We all want to do more for low-waged working families, but the distinction that I would make is that between what is known in the jargon as the unemployment trap and the poverty trap. The unemployment trap says, "Is it worth working at all?" and the poverty trap says, "Once you're working, is it worth working harder?" We are improving the unemployment trap by saying "If you take a low-paid job you keep your free school meals, which you didn't get previously, so we are helping with that," but then we say, "Having got into a low-paid job we haven't incentivised you to do overtime, or to train up, or whatever." Even under a Conservative Government, those trade-offs would exist.