Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, what I hoped that I had explained, although I failed to do so adequately, was this. As currently written, the Act is somewhat ambiguous. We and, I imagine, the previous Government have always interpreted this as needing to describe the progress we are making in policy terms in a way that does not require interim targets because such targets, when set every year, become absolutely tyrannical. They are particularly tyrannical when you are trying to change people’s lives and behaviours in a fundamental way. If you are worrying about interim targets every year, your efforts are undermined. This is a clarification to make it crystal clear that our understanding of the Act, and to be honest what I think was the previous Government’s understanding of the Act—the noble Lord and I spent many happy hours going over every word of it, although I am still not sure that I understand the word ““socioeconomic”” in it, but let us put that to one side—is that we can progress in the way we think is best, which is pursuing fundamental change for people, without the tyranny of interim targets. The previous Government did not want them and we do not want them. We want to be able to describe our progress towards the main target. I hope that the noble Lord will agree that that is the desirable way to go with this. It is not an easy thing to do. Dealing with child poverty is really tough. The noble Lord knows it and I know it, as do we all. Let us not mess about with it, but try to do the fundamentals, and this is what we need for that. We need to be absolutely clear that this approach will work.