Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Lord Touhig

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, these amendments, to which I have added my name, are essential to protect the basic well-being of the very poorest children. Those seeking to justify restrictions to our social security system have continually argued two things: first, that we must fairly distribute the burden of national economic hardship, and secondly, that we must take tough decisions in order to ensure a sustainable future. Yet driving down the value of child-related benefits achieves neither of those objectives. Instead, it unjustly shifts the burden onto the most vulnerable section of our society and damages the future prospects of hundreds of thousands of young people.

The Government’s own impact assessment highlights that the Bill as it stands will disproportionately affect families, with lone parents experiencing the most significant real-term cut to their income of £5 per week. Noble Lords might think that £5 is not much, so let us put that figure into context: it is the equivalent of half an average weekly heating bill or two lunches for a child. The loss of it is a significant challenge to the increasing number of parents currently struggling to cover utility costs or turning to local food banks for their children’s meals. In practice, the actual shortfall is likely to be larger still owing to above-inflation rises in the cost of necessities such as groceries, fuel and gas and electricity. The net result will inevitably be more child poverty and greater family suffering, making a mockery of any notion that this is a fair or just mechanism for securing cost savings.

As Helen O’Brien, the chief executive of Caritas Social Action Network, said recently,

“it is absurd to suggest that a child going to school hungry or coming home to a cold house is shouldering their fair share of austerity measures; rather they are being deprived of a basic standard of living to which all children are entitled”.

Removing child-related benefits from the scope of the Bill will not completely prevent or reverse this hardship, as low-paid and unemployed families will still face a rapidly widening gap between their outgoings and their core benefit income. However, specific parts of the safety net designed to cover essential costs of caring for their sons and daughters will be crucially safeguarded if these amendments are agreed.

This is particularly important given that the relentless squeeze on the support available for poor families has already left considerable numbers of children not only without the facets of a good childhood but growing up in simply unacceptable living conditions. Reflecting on cuts to local housing allowance and the pending introduction of the household benefit cap, Alison Gelder, chief executive of Housing Justice, recently noted that,

“across the country we are seeing increasing numbers of children suffering from a life in sub-standard housing and being forced into overcrowded accommodation”.

Taken in conjunction with this April’s intended ending of council tax benefit and the imposition of social housing underoccupancy penalties on approximately 220,000 families with children, these measures are putting the income levels of the poorest parents under unprecedented strain. On top of this, child benefit is already subject to a three-year freeze, which stands to create a further annual real-term loss of £130 by 2014.

More than ever the most vulnerable families require protected child-related benefits in order to mitigate the most damaging effects of this rapid and extensive cut to their income. At the very least, the Government should allow sufficient time for the impact of recent and pending benefit changes to be properly examined in relation to child poverty. The result of committing to another three years of real-term cuts before many key restrictions have even come into force will be disastrous for children whose parents are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table.

Ultimately, increased levels of child poverty are not only devastating for individuals and families but stand to have a profoundly negative effect our society. One of the most significant risks is to children’s education, an issue previously recognised in the DWP’s impact assessment on restrictions to housing benefits. It stated that overcrowding resulting from the cuts could hamper children’s ability to do homework and affect educational attainment. Last year, more than half of teachers surveyed reported that financial hardship among families had resulted in children arriving at their classes hungry, with significant consequences for concentration and behaviour. A report from the Children’s Food Trust last week reinforces the picture of children going to school hungry. Of 250 staff surveyed, 84% said they had seen children without enough to eat and 68% said they had seen an increase in this over the past two years. If child-related income is driven down further this is only likely to worsen, jeopardising the potential of even more young people and undermining the prospects of the next generation.

When parents struggle to afford basic necessities for children, there is also the very real risk of running into long-term personal debt. The shocking findings by the magazine Which? last year showed that payday loan companies now spend over half a million pounds targeting cash-strapped mothers and fathers by putting their adverts on television during children’s programmes. This is indicative of the increasingly desperate situation that so many families now face. A growing number of parents are turning to these lenders, while some 25% now use credit cards to meet everyday living costs. The abolition of community care grants and crisis loans in April only stands to deepen this problem by closing the door to interest-free emergency funds.

It is difficult to see how pushing even more parents into debt by slashing the value of child-related benefits will contribute in any way to our future economic recovery; yet increased levels of debt are precisely what will result from this Bill. Children still need healthy meals, warm houses, winter clothes and new shoes. When parents are faced with a real-term cut in child benefit and tax credits, alongside above-inflation rises in the prices of these goods, they will have to turn somewhere to make up the shortfall. It is as simple as that.

These amendments are not only right, but imperative. Capping up-rating of child-related benefits at 1% for the next three years will exacerbate the already unsustainable pressure that parents are under. It will cause serious damage to our communities in the long run and, most critically, it will drive down the living standards of millions of children. Protecting the basic level of income required to meet young people’s most intrinsic needs is a fundamental test of our society and one that we cannot afford to fail.

At the general election, the leader of the Opposition, Mr Cameron, now the Prime Minister, said that we lived in broken Britain. I paid little attention to him at the time because I believed he was wrong. However, after two and a half years, we live in a Britain where multi-millionaires are about to receive thousands of pounds a week in tax cuts; we live in a Britain where corrupt bankers who fiddled the LIBOR rate are rewarded with pay-offs when they should have gone to prison; we live in a Britain where those who operate our transport system cannot run the trains on time but get big bonuses; we live in a Britain where energy companies have more than trebled their profits yet require pensioners to pay an extra 6% for gas and electricity; and we live in a Britain where hard-working low-income couples with children will now see their weekly income slashed, the unemployed and poor will have their benefits cut and disabled people will see what help they get now cut or taken away altogether. Now, in 2013, I have started to understand what Mr Cameron meant by broken Britain.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I want to make some very brief comments on the amendments, mainly to follow up some things I said at Second Reading. As my noble friend Lord Touhig just said, these amendments are imperative, crucial and brilliant, and I congratulate the movers on putting them so powerfully. Any amendments that will mitigate against benefits having a negative impact on children are very forceful and follow very well from earlier, powerful speeches about child poverty.

I suggested at Second Reading that anything that might increase child poverty should be removed from the Bill. I say that again and support these amendments. The Government should really think about listening very carefully to the organisations and experts who work closely with children and families and who understand child poverty. These organisations and experts have pointed out the negative implications of this Bill. Surely their analyses should be taken very seriously.

The Government have already announced that the Bill will directly increase relative-income child poverty by 200,000 children, of which 100,000 will be in families in work. Nearly all the highly vulnerable children that Barnardo’s works with are receiving in-work or out-of-work benefits. This Bill will impose a real-term cut to their income. One in 10 families will be affected by this Bill, the poorest families most.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Lord Touhig

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I rise at the request of my noble friend Lady Howe to speak to the amendments that she has tabled. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, explained, she cannot be here today. I am delighted to be able to follow the noble Baroness. It is more than 20 years since we had our first student governors when I was chairman of a school board. They made an important contribution right at the beginning because they started with a list of complaints about what they thought was wrong with the school, particularly the quality of the food. The school governing body decided that the first task of our student governors would be to do market research among the rest of the school and to talk to the dieticians and so on to decide what we should have on offer at the school. They came forward with a very good and healthy eating programme, and what the school sold at lunchtime reflected that. They continued to make an important contribution to the life of the school and the role started to grow.

Even now, I know that a number of schools unofficially invite students along to sit on school boards. I talked to a teacher last year who told me that the hardest part of the process of getting the job in his school was being interviewed by the students because they interviewed the teachers and then presented a report to the appointments committee of the governing body. I believe it is correct that we should put the rights of students in statute and allow students to become school governors. This will improve inclusion and will give students a voice. I remember that when I got expelled from college, having accused the principal of acting like Adolf Hitler, I would certainly have liked to have had some student support, but it did not exist.

Amendments 113A and 113B are probing amendments to examine the way the Education Bill is changing the relationship between the head teacher’s responsibilities and those of the governing body and whether, as a result, there should be changes in their statutory relationship. Amendment 113A proposes removing the opportunity for the head teacher to be a full member of the governing body of a school. I must admit that over the years I have thought that they should be and that they should not be, and at the moment I conclude that they should not be. Currently, the vast majority of head teachers are members of their governing body, but with the added responsibilities the Bill proposes for head teachers, they will have a degree of conflict in reporting to the governing body and holding themselves to account as members of the governing body. The National Governors’ Association thinks there is a conflict of interest and believes that it is worth resolving.

The suggestion is that it should be solved simply by the head teacher not being a full member of the governing body but reporting to the governing body on the school’s policies and so on. Noble Lords will know that the key role of the governing body is to examine the head teacher’s proposals for the school and to agree or disagree with them. Head teachers propose the majority of strategies, policies and initiatives to their governing body and therefore will attend the governing body in any event, even though they would not be governors. However, under this amendment, they would not take part in the decisions that the governing body would reach on their policies. By way of a parallel, it is extremely unusual for the chief executive of, say, a charity to be a trustee and a member of the board, and permission has to be sought from the Charity Commission. The suggestion is therefore that this practice should be adopted by the schools sector and that these lines be removed from the Bill.

In the House of Commons, a number of Members were concerned about the undue influence that head teachers have over governing bodies. I became a school governor at the age of 18. I do not know whether that was legal. It was 1966, and I got co-opted on to a school governing body. I had experience of teaching appointments, which is a very important role of a governing body. I became chairman of the board. We had four schools in our group: two secondary schools, and two grammars schools—a boys’ grammar school and a girls’ grammar school. The headmaster of the boys’ grammar wooed the governors. He persuaded them, he influenced them, he drew them along the lines that he wanted and he inevitably got the person he wanted appointed to the job when there was a vacancy, but the head of the girls’ school had no such subtle approach. She simply told the governing body, “I want you to appoint that one”, and inevitably it ignored her. I have seen those two extremes whereby heads can have a great deal of influence, perhaps in the wrong way, particularly on teaching appointments.

This small change proposed for the composition of governing bodies will not in itself rectify the probable dysfunctional relationship. Removing the right of head teachers to sit on governing bodies would send a signal about the respective leadership roles of the governing body and the head. Understanding each other’s role is important for the effective working of the governing body. As your Lordships will know, the National Governors’ Association was pleased to see in last November’s White Paper that the Government said:

“School governors are the unsung heroes of our education system … To date, governors have not received the recognition, support or attention that they deserve. We will put that right”.

This amendment provides some much needed recognition that the role of the governing body is to monitor, to challenge and to support the head teacher in the best interests of the children in the school. The amendment would bring clarity and the good practice that exists in the charitable sector, and would greatly benefit schools. It is important that we see a very close working relationship between the head and the governing body, but it is distinct, and it is important that we recognise that.

I am sure that many of us who have served on governing bodies have had all sorts of experiences over the years where there have been dangers of conflict. I served on a governing body where we used to meet until 11.15 pm because of conflict between the governors and the headmaster, and the only way we resolved it was by all the governors eventually being removed by the bodies that nominated them and a new team being put in so that we could have better co-operation. The amendment before your Lordships will benefit and greatly enhance the way in which governing bodies and head teachers can work positively in support of their schools.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I support the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend Lord Touhig about having students on governing bodies for two reasons. First, it would be good for the school and, secondly, it would be good for the students to have experience of being on a governing body. We have got better at listening to children over the past six or eight years or so. I sit on a couple of boards on which young people are now represented, and they collaborate fully. We have a Youth Parliament that is incredibly powerful, sensitive and sensible. We have talked before about the importance of school councils. Having pupils as governors is an extension of that. School councils are elected. They are not just there to talk about the toilets. They talk about all kinds of important issues, such as school meals, discipline and bullying, and they talk about the ethos and curriculum of the school. This is all to the good. Schools benefit and young people benefit, so I support the amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Lord Touhig

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

Could I interrupt my noble friend? Members of your Lordships’ House are a good deal older than school children and can make their own choice.

[Lord Touhig]

Yes, indeed, and a number of Members did not come into the Chamber. It is right and proper that they should be able to exercise that right. Equally, parents on behalf of their children can exercise the same right under the law as it stands. My noble friend said earlier that the law was flouted and therefore asked why we have it, but there is a law which says you should not drink and drive. Would we imagine abolishing it because some people flout it? This morning I saw two people driving cars while using their mobile phones. Again, that is against the law, but because the law has been broken, should we take it off the statute book? Of course we should not. I do not think that that arguments carries any weight.

For the reasons I have given, it is worth while to maintain the collective act of worship in our schools and I believe it is right that that collective act of worship should be Christian in nature for the reasons I have argued. Other noble Lords may have different views, and it is important that we should respect each other’s views. The present law allows for that.

My final comment is this. One of my oldest friends, the late Leo Abse, represented Pontypool and Torfaen in the other place for over 30 years and was probably responsible for more social legislation than any Back-Bencher in the history of the British Parliament. His final words to his constituency Labour Party when he announced his retirement were these: “Tolerate everything and tolerate everyone, but do not tolerate intolerance”. I believe that these amendments lead to a degree of intolerance. I am sure that that is not the intention, but it is where I believe they will lead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I looked at Amendments 138 and 140 and was troubled and confused. After listening to my noble friend Lady Massey, I am worried again. She knows me well enough to know that I have no wish to misrepresent her in any way, but she seems to be saying that, in her view, faith schools are more likely to be homophobic, do not take youngsters from poorer backgrounds and are therefore more middle-class. If that is what she is saying, I am sure she genuinely believes it, but perhaps I may suggest—taking the point made by the right reverend Prelate—that she moves out of London and travels around the country to see what faith schools are actually doing in some of the most deprived communities in our country.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend in full flow but I must say that what I said about the issue of homophobic bullying in faith schools was a quotation from someone in this Room. It was not my impression—I quoted someone who averred that this was the case. On his second point, I am not saying that all faith schools are of one particular calibre, I am saying that some schools undoubtedly experience what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, that parents move to the grandparents’ house or to the end of the road to get into a particular school, which remains firmly ghettoised, if I may use the expression.

[Lord Touhig]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for clarifying that point, because it is important that we fully understand her views on this. I am glad that I gave her the opportunity to explain in more detail what she believes and understands. I accept her final point. I have been the governor of a faith school and there are instances where people move around in order to try to get their child into a faith school.

I am troubled and confused about Amendment 138. It states:

“No Academy may select more than 50% of its pupils on criteria based on religious characteristics”.

It goes on to say that those who attend will be required,

“to take a full part in the school’s religious life”.

It seems to state that half the school population should not be of any particular faith but that all the school population must take part in the school’s religious life. To my mind, that is wrong. I strongly support the view that parents should have the right to withdraw their child or children from the religious life of a school if they so wish. At the moment, Catholic schools that convert to academy status retain their existing admissions arrangements. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, would mean that 50 per cent of the pupils would not be admitted on the basis of faith. This makes no sense whatsoever and is really discriminatory. My noble friend Lady Massey made the point about public funding for faith schools. The Catholic church, like others, pays a great deal of money towards supporting its own schools in any event. We should bear that in mind.

Amendment 140, moved by my noble friend Lady Massey, states,

“admission arrangements for the school should make no provision for selection on the basis of religion or belief”.

I am sure that it is not my noble friend’s intention, but that would put at risk every Catholic school and faith school in the country. What is the point of having a Catholic school, or a faith school of any kind, if there is to be no provision based on faith, belief or religion in deciding the admissions policy? I am sure it is not her intention—I am sure it would never be the intention of my party—to close every faith school in the country, but that is the risk of this amendment.

Social Fund Maternity Grant Amendment Regulations 2011

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Lord Touhig

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Sherlock secured this debate and I pay tribute to her for doing so. However, it is with great regret that she has had to withdraw, and she has asked me to speak in her place. I agreed to do so willingly, but alas I fear that I will not execute the task as well as she would have done. I should also declare an interest as president of HomeStart in my former constituency of Islwyn.

The two poorest groups in our society are those at the extreme end of the age range—pensioners and young children—and the change the Government are making to the Social Fund Maternity Grant is an outright attack on young children born into some of the poorest families in Britain. Put simply, at present women receiving certain means-tested benefits can get a grant of £500 to help with the costs of a new baby. The Government intend to abolish this payment for the second and subsequent children. A woman who gives birth to a new baby will lose the grant if she already has another child aged under 16 in the household.

The Government are planning £9 billion of cuts in the tax and benefits system, and some £4 billion of those are going to come from child support. I believe that this shows that the Government are out of touch. They assume that parents need only to spend the grant to acquire a pram, a pushchair, a cot, baby clothes and all that is needed for a newborn child just once in a lifetime. I suppose they imagine that all these things can be stored away as the first child grows out of them in case another child follows, and they assume that this storage can go on for 16 years.

This is an attack on some 150,000 of the poorest families in Britain. The Government are taking this step without proper consultation and against the advice of well-known family support groups such as Gingerbread and the Social Security Advisory Committee. Yes, even the advice of the Social Security Advisory Committee, the independent body which provides impartial advice to the Government on these matters, is being ignored. The advisory committee has described the proposals to restrict the maternity grant as lacking a “coherently argued rationale” and has stated that they appear to run counter to Government policy to abolish child poverty by 2020.

The department responsible, the Department for Work and Pensions, has stated that:

“This change will undoubtedly cause hardship for some cases. However this will not impact on the child poverty figures”,

due to the fact that maternity grants are one-off lump-sum payments which do nothing to increase annual income. The department is known across Whitehall as DWP, which is also a word in Welsh—“dwp” means stupid and daft in the head. Anyone who actually believes that this measure will not impact on child poverty is not taking the issue seriously at all. Indeed, Gingerbread has said:

“The DWP fails to recognise the significant and negative impact that this measure will have on the ability of poor and low-income families to buy essential baby equipment. Single parents are more likely than couple families to be poor: 52% of children in single parent families grow up poor. If a single parent has just separated from a partner, they are likely to have experienced a drop in income. If they are pregnant, or later become pregnant and cannot claim the [grant] because they already have a child under 16, many will struggle to buy items such as a pushchair, cot and car seat. If they have fled domestic violence and have no belongings for themselves or their other child, this situation is [made even worse]. The impact is likely to be particularly great where there is more than a two-year gap between children”.

Gingerbread also points out that the,

“DWP mistakenly assumes that [the grant] will have been claimed for the first child”,

But the organisation’s helpline suggests that large numbers of people do not claim the grant for their child through ignorance or the complexity of the tax and benefits system.

The Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee of your Lordships' House said that the Government’s target of 24 January for the coming into force of the instrument in order for the change to take effect in April of this year,

“has severely curtailed both the time available for consultation and for Parliamentary scrutiny”.

Furthermore, the SSAC was able to consult for only nine days on this proposal—a dismally short period. Alas, this is becoming typical of the Government, who seem to view consultation and scrutiny as optional, rather than viewing them as mechanisms which can improve government proposals and mitigate their worst, ill-thought-out effects.

As the Merits Committee noted, no impact assessment has been provided to Parliament. Little information has been given on the costs of alternative policy options and the department had not explained why the option chosen was preferred. Again, this looks like policy made on the hoof for short-term political, rather than long-term welfare, considerations.

The Social Security Advisory Committee suggested that the way in which Government have alighted on some decisions as part of this policy change lacks reasoned explanation. The committee pointed to the way in which the Government had arrived at the exceptions to the new rules, and why the option to restrict to payments who are the only children under 16 in a family was chosen above the other options presented to them. The proposal is that if there is a child in the family under the age of 16, there is no entitlement to the maternity grant. The SSAC believes that,

“this is an unreasonably high threshold and should be set at a much lower age, possibly as low as five”.

This point is reiterated by the Merits Committee, which noted:

“The rationale for limiting eligibility to households where there is no child under 16 is not explained. While it is reasonable to expect some recycling of baby equipment among siblings, the SSAC points out that it seems unrealistic to think that parents of a fifteen year old would retain baby goods that long”.

My wife and I have four children, and there was a five-year gap between the birth of our third and fourth children. I can tell your Lordships that when the fourth child arrived we had to go out and buy a whole new lot of equipment.

The advisory committee states that,

“the changes to the rules for Sure Start Maternity Grants are based on an assumption that the payments are made on the basis of meeting additional expenses incurred by the purchase of new items regarded as necessary for a baby, and that they fail to recognise ongoing or recurrent costs such as the need for the mother to eat healthily or for the home to be kept sufficiently warm”.

This would suggest that this policy, like so many that the Government have put forward, has not been properly thought through.

One respondent to the advisory committee noted that,

“each pregnancy and preparation for a baby costs an average of £1,600, and that this estimate does not simply include the ‘hardware’ required but also additional heating and travel costs for hospital visits: so there are considerable costs that cannot be met by ‘recycling’ goods from a previous pregnancy”.

The Government have not properly considered what costs incurred for children apply to every child and cannot be mitigated by hand-downs. As a result, their proposal to restrict maternity grants to the first child looks increasingly muddled and will produce significant hardships for families across the country.

There will be an intervening period of eight to 12 months between the introduction of the new rules for maternity grants and the introduction of mitigating measures to extend Social Fund budgeting loans to include maternity items. The Social Security Advisory Committee said that,

“this would mean that many people will be left without any alternative means for meeting the additional expenditure incurred by a second or subsequent baby beyond going without or having to resort to high cost lenders”.

One of the most worrying aspects of the proposals is the lack of a safety net for those who lose their grant. While a loan facility will eventually be available, the changes are not being put in place at the same time. The mitigation measures will not come into effect until at least eight months after the cuts to maternity grants have been implemented.

The committee said that it was particularly concerned about this, stating:

“It would be a difficult enough step for someone who would have been entitled to an SSMG of £500, to go to having to apply for a budgeting loan for the required items. But it is an entirely different matter if there is no provision to be made at all within the benefits system and they were expected to borrow commercially instead. People eligible for an SSMG would be unlikely to have access to low-cost credit – indeed many would need to borrow at APRs in excess of 100 or even 200%”.

The advisory committee urged the Government to look at halving their budget for this grant and to look at the impact of other changes; for example, to housing benefit, health in pregnancy grant and tax credits. It said that no such evaluation of the rationale had been presented to them. Respondents to the advisory committee pointed out that the cuts in the maternity grant will cause hardships for families which may translate into additional costs for other bodies such as local authority social services departments and the NHS. The SSAC therefore concluded that a more tempered level of saving may be achieved than other outcomes would yield.

The committee also observed that the low-income families eligible to apply for the grant are those most likely to have been in temporary accommodation or in homes with cramped conditions, which would make it unlikely that they would have had places for long-term, regular storage of baby equipment. Anyone with a new child knows how much stuff children can generate as they grow up and grow out of their baby clothing and equipment. People living in cramped conditions simply cannot keep such things just in case they have more children. The policy ignores conditions in low-income families and the realities of their situations, quite possibly because too many in the Government have no experience of, or any concern about, people living in such conditions. Most concerning, it risks exposing children born into low-income families to poverty from the moment they are born. That simply cannot be right for the fourth-richest country on the planet. It is not morally right either.

Rather than listening to the SSAC, the body which is supposed to advise the Government on these issues, the Government have instead pushed ahead blindly and said that they have no plans even to review the policy. It is typical of the arrogance that this Government now display that they never seem to listen to reasoned arguments or objections from any outside source, but rather they assume that they are right and that everyone else is wrong.

The Merits Committee concluded:

“This instrument seems to have been inadequately planned and explained”.

It wisely suggested that your Lordships,

“may wish to press the DWP for a better explanation of why the other options suggested were not pursued and what the anticipated impact on new mothers and children in low-income families will be”.

I hope that the Minister has some encouraging answers.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I support the Motion of Regret put so ably by my noble friend Lord Touhig. I shall speak very briefly and widen out the debate a little.

There has been a lot of discussion in your Lordships' House recently on early intervention. There have also been many reports recently, including one by Frank Field on child poverty and one by Graham Allen on early intervention. I thought and hoped that the Government would have understood the importance of spending now to save later.

During the recent debate on parenting of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, I was greatly impressed by a statement from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. He cited the Graham Allen report on early intervention, which said that decades of expensive late intervention had failed. In his response, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, said:

“I hope that it is also fair to say that this Government, like the previous Government, recognise the importance of the early years in children's lives and development”.—[Official Report, 3/2/11; col. 1500.]

How true, but do the Government still recognise that?

This measure, cutting a grant to low-income families, may well contribute to both poverty and to poorer outcomes for children. It may not seem like much money, but it is to some people and some families generally. The loss of the money could affect the lives of not only the child or children—and some people have twins—but also affect the relationship between the parents. Stress can be created by poverty, and poverty affects relationships. It also affects maternal health, which is a key to good health and achievement in children.