Household Support Fund: Children’s Bed Poverty

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The House will know—and I shall say this again—that this is one of the ways forward. The most important thing is for people to be in work. She will know, for example, that we have brought the figure down for workless households very substantially since 2009-10.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

With eight different government departments dealing with poverty, is not it time that we actually co-ordinated our dismantling of poverty by bringing in a government department that deals exclusively with poverty prevention?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I am very aware of the noble Lord’s interest in this area. I recall the debate that he led on about three weeks ago, which I was involved in. I have very much taken note of his view. We do not agree that there needs to be such a high level of focus on poverty. Having said all that, I think that he is aware of the huge number of initiatives that we are taking, particularly cross-government, in tackling poverty, particularly child poverty.