Children Living in Poverty

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I have already made it clear at this Dispatch Box that we intend to end the benefit freeze next year. Again, the stats produced by the Social Metrics Commission last year predate much of the additional support that we have invested in the system since the last Autumn Budget.

We have done a huge amount to help families through transforming the welfare system so that people are not just helped into work. We are working hard on in-work progression, so that people preferably do not just have a full-time job—three-quarters of all jobs since 2010 are full time—because we want people to have good jobs, and are piloting new ways of supporting that. We are also boosting our capability to work with local businesses and working with jobcentre specialists to encourage local employers to support progression and good-quality flexible working which will support the children of those families in work.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has talked a lot about what the Government are doing to help people in jobs, but if the aim is to get families out of poverty, it is not working. The facts are clear: people are simply moving from one kind of poverty into another—that is, from out-of-work poverty into in-work poverty. The impact on children is very serious. Did the Minister see the recent research in the Archives of Disease in Childhood showing that child poverty has not only risen but will rise further? It looked at the impact on children of being in poverty in childhood and found that those in “persistent poverty” were three times as likely to have mental health problems and twice as likely to have a long-standing illness. The president of the Institute of Child Health said that we need,

“national targets to reduce child poverty backed by a national child poverty strategy, the reversal of cuts to universal credit and the reversal of public health cuts”.

Does the Minister agree?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, again, we are doing a huge amount, quite a lot of which is not reported or reflected in the additional support we have injected. I have just returned from the G7 in Paris, where we focused on labour. There is no question that, across the world, the changing world of work presents challenges. We are at the forefront on this issue; other countries look to us. Our living wage is way in excess of what other countries afford their citizens. We are setting an example and achieving a huge amount in having a transformational system that helps people into work, pays them to work and gives them in-work progression. Let me give an example: a couple with three children need to work for a total of only 24 hours per week to be exempted from the benefit cap; they can then receive from the state the equivalent of a £35,000 gross salary a year, plus housing support. That is not ungenerous.