My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 4 in my name and those of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baronesses, Lady D’Souza and Lady Stroud, whose support I am grateful for, although they could not speak today. The purpose is to ensure there is a levelling-up mission to reduce levels of absolute, relative and deep child poverty in each local authority and across the UK.
On Second Reading, I quoted the response of the Levelling-up Secretary to a Conservative Back-Bencher who had argued that levelling up applies to need, not geography. “Yes, absolutely,” said Mr Gove:
“It is critically important that we … address poverty wherever we find it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/2/22; col. 339.
The former Prime Minister Mr Johnson was asked by the Liaison Committee:
“Can you level up the country without reducing the number of children living in poverty?”
He replied, “No.” When he was told that child poverty was not mentioned once in the levelling-up White Paper, he assured the committee that this was a “purely formal accident”. So, while I appreciate the detailed
letters sent by the Minister following Second Reading, it was disappointing that nowhere could I find an answer to the question I had posed—
“could the Minister please explain why a mission to reduce the level of child poverty has not been added to the list of missions in the White Paper?”—[Official Report, 17/1/23; col.1766.]
given that its omission was apparently an accident. Indeed, I could not find any mention of child poverty at all in her levelling-up letter. Is that another accident?
Part of my argument on Second Reading was that levelling up has to be about people as well as places if it is to meet its objectives, including giving everyone the opportunity to flourish. Indeed, although the existing missions are framed in terms of inequalities between areas, ultimately, many of them concern people rather than the places in which they live, and earlier, the Minister acknowledged that levelling up is about people and places.
However, apart from the education mission, children are conspicuous by their absence. Yet, to quote Action for Children,
“Levelling up can only succeed if this includes levelling up for children.”
Levelling up for children has to address the child poverty that blights our society, with nearly 4 million children in poverty, or getting on for three in 10, projected by the Resolution Foundation to rise to its highest rate since 1998-99 by 2027-28. Moreover, half of children in families with three or more children are projected to be in poverty by that year. A glimpse of what this means is provided in an open letter from participants in the participatory Changing Realities project:
“Our children are hungry. Schools report ‘short concentration’ and ‘unmanageable moods’. They have lost their childhood ... we are sick with anxiety, drowning in financial doom.”
The report in which this is reproduced, prepared by the APPG Child of the North just last month, noted:
“We know that poverty is the central driver of inequalities between children, leading to worse physical and mental health, poorer educational attainment and life chances and alarming … gaps in life expectancy”.
This underlines the importance of tackling child poverty through existing missions on education, health and well-being. Gaps in healthy life expectancy cannot be closed without tackling child poverty. As the BMA has warned, “poverty kills”. In a recent BMJ interview, the President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health observed that social deprivation is a far bigger problem for children’s health than it was five to 10 years ago. She warns that poverty
“essentially eats away at what we believe the kinds of key components of a healthy childhood are”
and that this is going to have a generational impact. She calls for long-term thinking and, in the absence of government action, the college is encouraging paediatricians to lobby politicians on their commitment to reduce child poverty and health inequalities. Indeed, the royal college has briefed in support of this amendment, presenting evidence that child poverty is a key driver of health inequalities.
As a recent open letter to the Prime Minister from leading public health bodies and others—signed by many Peers, including myself—makes clear, the impact
of child poverty and food insecurity on health has knock-on effects on education and achievement levels in schools. The educational mission looks to level up the numbers of primary schoolchildren achieving the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. Yet there is no acknowledgement of how poverty prevents many children reaching their potential with, as the public health letter spells out, implications for the provision of free school meals and breakfasts.
While I have stressed the importance of the levelling-up agenda explicitly addressing inequalities between people as well as places, as I argued earlier and the Minister accepted, the case for a child poverty mission stands, even if one accepts the Minister’s assertion, in her levelling-up letter, that the missions are “necessarily spatial”. The amendment is thus deliberately framed so as to include a spatial as well as a national, aggregate dimension. The evidence provided in the APPG Child of the North report, and also by Action for Children, shows clearly the spatial dimension to child poverty. According to Action for Children, 60 out of 152 local authorities have child poverty rates above the average. The APPG report underlines how the risk of child poverty is consistently higher in the north than in the rest of the country. However, it should also be noted that, after taking account of housing costs, research by my university, Loughborough, for End Child Poverty found that some of the highest child poverty rates are to be found in London authorities. So, in order to level up all these areas, wherever they are, we need an explicit child poverty mission that addresses both the extent and depth of child poverty.
The Minister’s letter explains that the levelling-up missions aim
“to anchor ambition and provide clarity over the objectives of public policy for the next decade”
and that they will be varied only
“following careful review of all missions”.
Yet we are constantly told that the Government are committed to reducing child poverty, and earlier the Minister said that levelling up is about bridging the gap between rich and poor. So, I ask again: why is there not a child poverty mission which would underpin and complement the existing missions and help to bridge that gap? Such a mission is important, both because children experience childhood only once and because poverty in childhood can have longer-term effects on their education, health and general well-being and their ability to flourish and realise their potential. Thus, this is urgent. Children cannot wait for a review of existing missions some years hence.
If the Minister cannot accept the amendment, will she at least agree to take it away and consider the addition of a child poverty mission to the existing list? If not, we can only conclude that the Government do not care sufficiently about child poverty or children to include them in their levelling-up strategy. I beg to move.
6.15 pm