Welfare Reform Bill

I am going to apologise because I think that I now stand between the Committee and what I gather is the custom that the Minister buys drinks for the whole Committee at the end. Despite the late hour, this is a really important issue that needs raising, but I fear that because of the hour we may need to return to it later. The Child Poverty Act 2010, which established the Child Poverty Commission, was passed with cross-party support, and we believe that there is now similar support for the proposal to expand its remit to deal with social mobility, a move which the Opposition certainly welcome. However, we have serious concerns about what will happen to child poverty in the coming years. It has been mentioned several times in the Committee. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has predicted that the number of children in poverty, which had fallen to its lowest level for 25 years by the end of the previous Labour Government, will now under this Government rise to its highest rate since 1999-2000 by 2020, by which time one in four children will be poor, measured in relative terms. I am going to raise the main points. The main point is the duty. The potential rise in child poverty over the coming years makes the work of this commission essential. The debate about its function—whether it is simply going to help count numbers or whether it is going to give advice about the impact of the numbers—is crucial. If we look at the role of the commission, one of the most important things has been the proposal that it should have a duty to advise Ministers, but this is now to be taken out. It will therefore have no duty to advise Ministers on the preparation of their strategy. It has meant that this is only the responsibility of government. Surely the commission should not just look at technical issues around the measurement of poverty and social mobility, but should also look at advising on the results of that measurement—to advise the Government on its role. If it was only measuring it, the commission itself would neither attract a high level of membership nor would it be able to do its role properly. We therefore ask why should there not be a requirement that it advise Ministers on the policy itself? Also, how can it be that this commission could be put together without a requirement that people so appointed should be expert in its field? The final question is that it should have to have the ability to get its own research otherwise it would be dependent simply on research from the Government, which it is meant to be scrutinising. I beg to move.