My Lords, I warmly support Amendment 23, to which I have added my name. I hope your Lordships will forgive me for making this point but when I think of my formative political years in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when we had such clear aspirations for our society, I find it almost inconceivable that here we are, still one of the wealthiest nations in the world, having to discuss whether or not, as a result of policy, we are facing a deteriorating situation in the nutrition, health and mental health of people in this country. I find it appalling. I can hardly believe that this is happening and that this is the reality, when we had all those aspirations—which broadly went across political lines in those years. I think it is disgraceful and I hope the Government take seriously that, at the day of reckoning, they will have a lot to answer for.
I had an inner-city constituency when I was a Member of Parliament and I saw then the clear connection between poverty, educational attainment, health and mental stability. I also saw the impact as families—which we keep saying are so important in our priorities—with totally inadequate means tried to cope with mental breakdown and mental illness in their midst.
In policy-making we need to proceed on sound evidence. The anecdotal evidence, the evidence of practical experience, is overwhelming. I keep being disturbed by
the reports I read about teachers seeing children coming to school hungry and undernourished—how can we possibly hope for advancement in educational achievement in this situation? Teachers are now out of pocket themselves on occasion, financing breakfast for the children concerned. We need all the hard evidence we can find. As a society, we are increasingly concerned about mental illness, which seems to be increasing by disturbing dimensions. Of course, mental illness is related to the basic issue of the security of a decent home.
I have mentioned my experience as the MP for an inner-city area but I saw this issue arising in another context, when for nine years I had the privilege of being the president of the YMCA in England. The YMCA has a very big housing programme, and I could see that it was just ridiculous to regard administering a housing programme as just managing it. There were always huge social dimensions attached to that housing programme. Why were people there, needing our support? Why were people in the state they were in? These questions were constantly before us.
We need the maximum amount of real evidence of what is happening on the front line, and it is altogether sensible and encouraging that the noble Baroness—not for the first time, I might say—is challenging us to do something practical to see from the front-line evidence what the situation is.
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