My Lords, I hope to make an even shorter contribution to this important debate. I agree that the amendment relating to child poverty is apposite and important. I want to confine myself to seeking further clarification from the Minister, if she has the information to hand. It would be to the Committee’s advantage if we knew more about what we can expect from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, because it relates directly to the substance of this amendment.
I was pleased that there was a recent change to the membership of the commission and that our very own noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northwold, has joined it. I am pleased about that because she is an experienced hand and I trust her judgment. I look forward to seeing the fruits of her work within that commission. It is important to us all. However, I was disappointed to learn recently that the first annual report of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission is not now to be with us before 26 September this year. We were expecting it in May. I make that observation because it is a sign of drift, potentially. If I am wrong about that, I hope that I will be put right.
I was very uneasy about adding social mobility to child poverty. The original terms of reference of the 2010 Bill as put forward by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, were the correct ones. The Deputy Prime Minister, of whom I am a great fan, as I am sure people understand, was wrong. Social mobility is a
different subject altogether. It is much longer term and in the short term, we are dealing with a situation that is more of an emergency than the aspiration of social mobility, which of course we all accept. We really need to understand what contribution to child poverty this commission will make. If the Front Bench can tell us anything about that in the course of this amendment, that would be very useful.
My second point is that of course we know that there is a consultation on child poverty measurement. I am taxing my memory here, but I think we were expecting the end of the consultation to be earlier this year—some time in February. If that is the case and my memory is correct, I hope we can be told that the Government’s contribution to the further development of child poverty measurement will be vouchsafed to us sometime soon. It will certainly be important to get hold of this around the time of the Budget, if we can. Some of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s assessments of future policy in terms of the Budget should be seen against the background of the Government’s view about how they will treat child poverty measurement in the future.
I am slightly nervous about some of the things that I have been hearing are being factored into the measurement of child poverty in the future. It may be that I am misreading signals but I hope that we do not lose focus on the fact that, at the end of the day, child poverty can be addressed only with money. Regarding any attempt to dress that up and expand the measurements too widely, while I am in favour of having all the data and metrics that we can access, for the reasons I explained on the last amendment we are facing an emergency situation the extent of which I did not anticipate.
The difficulties are mounting up, as we heard earlier. The decisions to be taken by the Government in the near future on measuring the data on child poverty are very important. If the Minister can help us to understand when we might expect information of that kind, it would help the Committee’s consideration of this Bill not just today but over the rest of its proceedings.