Child Poverty

Earl of Arran Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Arran (Con)]

My Lords, children sleeping on the floor, sharing a mattress and not having enough food to eat—this is not a case history from Victorian times but a description of the very real lives of many children living in 21st-century Britain. Our rich and affluent capital city has one of the highest child poverty levels in the UK, along with Birmingham and Manchester. Currently 3.9 million children live in poverty in the United Kingdom. This means that children are considerably more likely to live in poverty than adults. It is not necessary and not acceptable, and we can do something about it.

Growing up in poverty can blight children’s well-being and their future life chances. For example, children living in poverty are more likely to have poor physical and mental health and are less likely to achieve their potential at school and in employment. Children experience poverty differently from adults. An adult can temporarily fall into poverty, but poverty in childhood can last a lifetime. Child poverty and inequality can be passed on to future generations and lead to a cycle of deprivation for many families.

The effects of child poverty are enormous. Poverty damages: it damages childhood, it damages life chances, and it damages us all in society. We all want our children to be able to enjoy their childhood and have a fair chance in life to reach their full potential.

Children from poorer backgrounds lag behind at all stages of education. According to Department for Education statistics, by the end of primary school, pupils receiving free schools meals are estimated to be almost three terms behind their more affluent peers. By the age of 16, children receiving free school meals achieve 1.7 grades lower at GCSE.

Poverty is also associated with a higher risk of both illness and premature death. Children born in the poorest areas of the United Kingdom weigh, on average, less at birth than those born in the richest areas. Children from low-income families are more likely to die at birth or in infancy than children born into richer families. They are also more likely to suffer chronic illness during childhood or to have a disability. Poorer health over the course of a lifetime has an impact on life expectancy: professionals live, on average, eight years longer than unskilled workers.

Children living in poverty are almost twice as likely to live in bad housing. This has significant effects on both their physical and their mental health, as well as their educational achievement. Fuel poverty also affects children detrimentally as they grow up. Low-income families frequently have to make a choice between food and heating. Children from low-income families often forgo events that most of us would take for granted. They miss school trips; they cannot invite friends round for tea; and their parents cannot afford a one-week holiday away from home.

My family has had the great privilege to be involved with a wonderful charity, the Children’s Country Holidays Fund, since its inception over 130 years ago. Like many other charities, we aim to give disadvantaged children the opportunities and experiences that they would not normally have access to. It is very humbling that over those years we have been able to send away more than 2.5 million children from the Greater London area. It is a sad indictment on society that the plight of many of the children whom we support echoes that of the children whom the charity supported in Dickensian London.

However, charities cannot do it all and, with commitment and action, child poverty can be ended. We need a benefits system that recognises the cost of a child; a childcare system that enables parents to work and children to thrive; a labour market that makes work a route out of poverty; and adequate support for families when parents cannot work. We need to demonstrate very clearly that, in spite of being a materialistic society, we are still a country of compassion and understanding.

Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee

Earl of Arran Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Arran (Con)]

My Lords, I think that it is reasonable to say that, when the committee first met, we had a fair degree of scepticism about such a legacy and that, if a legacy did exist, it would be minimal. Under the very able chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, and with unswerving guidance from our clerks, this, disappointingly, proved to be the case. Although the Government’s aspirations and intentions were well placed, our original doubt proved correct.

One of the principal justifications for spending £9 billion on this great sporting event was that it would transform overnight almost every aspect of how the public engaged with sport. We were all meant to pick up the nearest tennis racket or javelin and begin running, jumping, swimming, throwing and hitting with the passion of a convert. Well, it ain’t turned out quite like that. Taking the report as a whole, the comments and criticisms put forward by the committee found, strangely enough, an unusual agreement across most of the media, which possibly means that we were on the right track.

Out of all this, by far the most important point of this whole affair is physical education in schools, as so many noble Lords have said. In the committee, we made very forceful recommendations to the Government on this point. Physical exercise feeds the nation’s well-being; it causes the blood to flow more quickly and brings about a sense of achievement. It improves results in exams, as demonstrated in schools in Canada, and equally importantly, as mentioned before, it helps to combat the scourge of modern society, particularly among the young—the scourge of obesity. Of course, that would feed through into the hard-pressed NHS.

We called for investment to be made in primary school teachers and club coaches, the link between whom is of crucial importance, to create a more positive attitude to sport and physical activity in young people in the UK. We also called on the Government to require Ofsted to inspect and report on the time in the school day spent on PE, including out-of-hours sport, in all school inspections. That would ensure that school leaders take the development of PE seriously and invest in the professional development of teachers and coaches.

The Government’s response to these points was, frankly, pretty woolly. However, confirmation from the Department for Education that PE remains compulsory at all stages is welcome. It is absolutely essential that this continues to be the case, and woe betide any Government who relax this. As Graham Greene said:

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in”.

Why should not that future be that of great sporting heroes brought about by PE at a young age in our schools?

As regards individual sports mentioned in our report, I mention in particular tennis, which has been referred to, not only because I am a proud member of the Lords and Commons tennis team, captained recently by the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, but because I say that the criticism she levelled against the Lawn Tennis Association was totally justified. Over the years, I have been to a fair few meetings of the LTA and on all occasions found them to contain a lot of rather plausible waffle, with scant evidence of providing world-class players. I should tell your Lordships that both Andy Murray and Heather Watson did not go through the LTA system. The fact that the then chief executive received some £640,000 a year—the pay of a senior captain of industry—was a scandal. However, I now understand that the whole organisation has been restructured from top to bottom and that the new chief executive’s salary has been considerably reduced—and not before time.

Another of the report’s recommendations was that there needs to be a senior Minister, at Secretary-of-State level, to be responsible for accounting to Parliament for co-ordinating the delivery of this legacy. This would provide clear, identifiable national ownership of the Olympic and Paralympic legacy. Such a person should be resolute and determined to deliver the legacy. However, since this role would appear to involve every single department of government, we suspected that a certain amount of chaos could arise. It was unfortunate that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport was unable to tell us how often this committee met. It was left up to the galloping mayor, Boris Johnson, who came bounding along and, without hesitation, told us that it met only once a quarter. Does it show continuous resolve and determination to deliver this legacy that is so badly needed when the committee meets only four times a year to track the expenditure of £9 billion?

Out of our 41 recommendations, only one was accepted—that of ensuring that the regions outside London enjoy a tourism legacy from the Games. Were all the others that unacceptable? I think it is somewhat insulting to a committee of very diverse and able people who worked long and hard on this subject.

Governments, Ministers and civil servants come and go and we are on the verge of another general election. A new Government will appear with different priorities, policies and needs. It will take a very strong Government indeed to keep the flag of Olympic legacy flying high. While the Government’s intentions were noble, let us not forget that no Games have ever left behind a lasting boost in sporting participation. However, there have been benefits. For instance, all the remaining Olympic venues would appear to have viable, sustainable futures and the conversion of the athletes’ village into affordable housing is going well.

London 2012 was a wonderful party, and one that revived a desolate part of the capital. What the Olympics really gave us both in the organisation and in the performance of our athletes was the belief that we can be proud of our country and what it can achieve.