Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this change of heart from the Government, and I thank the Minister for bringing forward his amendment. It is good to know that we can guarantee that in future robust data will continue to be published about the incomes of poor children so that we can see what is happening to child poverty in Britain. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on his leadership on this issue and, like all other noble Lords, I thank the Child Poverty Action Group and the End Child Poverty coalition for their work. I thank noble Lords who have supported us on this issue through their words and their votes as the Bill has moved through this House.

I regret that we could not persuade the Minister to carry on reporting on child poverty, but I reassure anyone listening outside this House that we will continue to use these data as they are published to hold the Government to account for the consequences of their policies, particularly should those policies contrive to increase the number of poor children in Britain. I fear that I share the view of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham that it is most likely that that will take place.

I was not going to get into the area of poverty measurement but I have been tempted. I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth that while I have given up sugar for Lent I am not going to give up politics as well, so I hope that he will bear with me for just one moment. Since the Minister took the opportunity of saying why the Government do not want to be in the business of counting the incomes of poor children, I should say that no one has ever felt that it was just about money—but it is not not about money. I am still proud that the last Labour Government lifted 1 million children out of poverty. The Minister may not think that income transfers make that much difference but they really do to the families involved. Labour tried very hard not to focus on tipping people over some imaginary poverty line. Instead it invested child tax credits for all families; it put in place the New Deal to help parents into work; it created tax credits so they could afford to take their jobs; it gave them childcare so that women could afford to go out to work; and it created Sure Start to ensure that the children developed. Therefore I fully support his agenda to look at poverty across the piece. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham did a nice job of explaining the different kinds of poverty and wealth. However, in the end, if you cannot afford to feed your kids, money matters. I apologise to the right reverend Prelate but now I am back on track.

The particularly important thing about these data coming out is that there is very strong evidence of the scarring effects of living for a period of time on low income in childhood and what that does to children’s life chances. Therefore I hope that as the Government publish the data, because the data will then be available to them they will also influence policy-making. However, given all of that, the House of Lords has done itself proud; I am grateful to have been part of a process during the passage of the Bill where the House of Lords has been able to scrutinise the evidence and the Minister has been willing to listen. I thank all noble Lords and I thank him. I am grateful for this concession, which is important, and we are pleased to support the Motion.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions and thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who led in this area. I will make just one or two short points. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, I remind him that the forecasts of what happens to this measure of relative income are notoriously difficult to get right. I have been in this House on several occasions when there have been dire warnings that child poverty is about to go up over the next two years, but when you get to the figures two years later, it has not happened. I therefore hate having to defend myself against things that do not happen—it is bad enough having to defend myself against things that happen.

We have had a very useful debate on this area in this House. The point is that the debate succeeded in unpicking the concerns that noble Lords had, which is why we were able to find common ground. We are not in agreement in this area in our approach but we have found common ground here, and I hope both sides will be able to live with this amendment. However, I want to give some reassurance. One of the reasons we have brought forward this amendment is because we wanted to reassure the House and other people around the country that we take this whole issue seriously—that we have an agenda and we want to do something about this. We did not want to leave this issue with the impression that we were not taking it seriously. I can agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, that I am convinced, as she is, that the publication of the HBAI will not go by without comment by someone on each occasion.

I will pick up on the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, although I need to give him a two-handed answer. As I said when we went through this, we have separate arrangements—a specific set of payments—for bereavement. However, on domestic violence, which we dealt with specifically when we discussed it earlier, the right reverend Prelate has made reasoned arguments; I repeat my acknowledgement that this will remain an area of interest, at least for them, and anticipate the natural corollary of that. With those few words, I urge noble Lords to agree to the Motion.