Poverty: Metrics

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the debate has been incredibly rich. I do not know how to chip in with some fresh material. Let me try with some key points. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, should be thanked for leading the debate, but she has a huge team behind her: both the commissioners and the secretariat have spent two and a half years putting the report together. A gentleman called Matt Oakley deserves special praise for his sterling work over that period.

I am proud to declare an interest as an adviser to the Legatum Institute—I was involved, tangentially, in the launch—but I am also very sad because the report taught me that, over the past 25 years, the proportion of the country living in some form of poverty has remained almost static, at around 22%. That is a deep failure in government policy. It rocks one’s hope that anything can change, but I have hope: I think that the 14 million people living in poverty and the 7 million living in persistent poverty referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, can be lifted out of that state if we have better mechanisms to support them.

I believe that the Government are not necessarily a cumbersome, inert agent in all this; when prodded, they can have better policy. As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, put it so well, these statistics can be the intellectual engine to improve policy. Disability is an example of that, as was mentioned by a number of speakers, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Tyler and Lady Lister. The disabled are overlooked; the SMC figures are clear about that. I suspect that we will look back at these years with a sense of national shame over not calculating properly the cost to families and individuals of being disabled, in terms of lost possibilities, the capital costs of equipment and the cost of support. These things have not been measured properly. When they are, we will be deeply ashamed.

Thirdly, I want to convey a sense of the great opportunity here for the Minister if she can bring these statistics into the centre of government policy-making. Stakeholders are on the side of change. I encourage the Minister to look at the fantastic YouGov report on what voters think of the statistics. The press coverage on launch was incredibly powerful. The winds of change are blowing in the Minister’s direction; I encourage her to set up her sails and make these changes as soon as possible.