My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and not least to the Minister for his response. I am disappointed that he was not able to respond more to Amendment 17, because it is not an expensive proposal. It will help a significant number of children—real children with real disabilities. I know that money is being provided for disabled people in the greatest need, but the disabilities that are felt and known by those who would benefit from Amendment 17 are real. To accept the amendment would provide real support for a large number of children who could thereby have been enabled to play a greater part in our society, both for their benefit and for the benefit of the rest of us.
I accept that together, the amendments in this group would cost a significant amount of money at £0.9 billion. However, it is not fair to argue that welfare benefits cannot be excluded from the work that we have been doing in order to respond to our fiscal crisis. Welfare benefits have been tackled extensively through the whole welfare reform process. This comes over to me as twisting a knife in a wound. I regret that the Government have felt that this is the area where they have to find that £0.9 billion. I will not repeat the argument that there are other areas where we could have found it.
I am very grateful to all noble Lords who contributed examples of a wide range of people: the corporal in the Army with three children, who will lose £520 a year, the primary school teacher, the nurse, and so on. They showed that a wide range of people will be affected and damaged by the Bill. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for stressing the organisations that support children. It is good to have all the statistics produced, but however many of them there are, the reality comes home to me, not when I read the Children’s Society’s statistics, but when I go to see its work in Leeds and its projects with children who are hungry, who have to cut back on food, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, and whose future prospects
are being damaged, as the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, said. We need to do something to look at the ways in which we disadvantage children in practice by so much of the work we are doing.
I hope that we will come back to this issue on Report to see whether there is not something we can do to set down a marker and make a real contribution to the lives and vitality of children in our society. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.