Family Relationships (Impact Assessment and Targets) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Framlingham and Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

So, we are all agreed about that. I am now looking at new departments and new Secretaries of State with enthusiasm and I am glad the point has been clarified; I will go home a happier man.

Family impact assessments are a very valuable tool and we should be developing them. As this Bill makes quite clear, they allow for some perspective and anticipatory thinking at the policy-making level. I can see the effect of this; I serve on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and government departments are now getting much cleverer about impact assessments supporting, in terms of statutory instruments, the primary legislation that spawns the orders. What we should be doing here, and what I think the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, is trying to do, is to change the culture in departments so that they are always thinking about how this will work through the policy development. If they are doing that right at the beginning, it makes it much easier to get the policy right.

I think that departments—from an opposition point of view, this might be an unusual thing to say—should be braver about talking about the real costs of some of this policy. I was looking recently at some of the predictions and forecasts—we can never be sure that they will happen that way—and, frankly, in the next 20 years, when you look at the demographic change that this country is facing and all the other problems such as climate change, the resources available to do this family support work will get harder and harder to find. In telling the unvarnished truth, nobody wants to frighten anybody about all this, although some of the forecasts are really quite depressing, but we have to be realistic.

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

I agree very much with what the noble Lord is saying, and I am following his speech with great interest. He is talking now about costs, but does he not think it is worth considering that, if the family stay together more, the likely result of that is an enormous cost saving, both in money and other ways?