Child Poverty

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Teather (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on securing this debate. I am a long-standing fan of the noble Baroness. I worked with her quite a lot when I was a Member of the other place. I have huge admiration for her fearless and courageous advocacy on behalf of, often, children who are otherwise forgotten. I have collaborated with her on many, many issues over many, many years.

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to respond to this debate today on behalf of the Lib Dem Benches, and to have an opportunity to debate with the Minister, who, I recognise, has very deep knowledge and commitment in this area. This is an issue that I feel very passionately about. It is the reason why I made my maiden speech on the issue of child poverty just a few months ago.

There are a number of us here who have, in government, attempted to tackle child poverty. The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, outed herself in her early remarks, and I know she mentioned the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott. When I made my maiden speech, I spoke about the challenges of wrangling a child-poverty strategy across government as being a cross between cat wrangling and giving birth, and requiring an equally miraculous level of commitment to actually bring that to fruition.

The range of contributions today—highly knowledgeable contributions covering such a wide variety of topics—has brought that to the fore. We have heard many noble Lords speak about the moral imperative to tackle this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Kestenbaum, spoke about the role of schools. Language came up, and tone was mentioned by a number of noble Lords. The importance of childcare was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Smith of Llanfaes. Free school meals was an issue raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, and I will return to that in a minute.

A number of noble Lords spoke about how child poverty falls disproportionately on a number of different groups. The noble Lord, Lord Sahota, spoke about ethnic minorities and asylum-seeking families. The issue of families—single-parent families and families that have a disability—was raised by others. The noble Baroness, Lady Paul, spoke passionately about boys and how boys often fare least well. It was a very welcome contribution, I thought, to this debate today.

The noble Lord, Lord Babudu, spoke about the role of private investment, and a number of noble Lords spoke about health from different perspectives. The noble Baroness, Lady Nargund, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, spoke about mental health and obesity; the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, spoke about the impact on ageing. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, spoke about the multifaceted nature of poverty, and she was one of a number of noble Lords who raised the issue of low pay. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, spoke about the cost of education, which is something I want to pick up in a moment.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough spoke about rural poverty, which, again, I think is often missed out from this debate, where we focus particularly on urban areas. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, spoke about the need for an integrated approach and integrated programmes. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, talked about the scale of the challenge, and the noble Lord, Lord John of Southwark, opened his remarks by speaking about the need for some cross-party consensus. I suppose I will kick off there, on the need for cross-party consensus.

I hope the Minister finds me a kind of encourager. I have some areas where I want to say I would like the Government to go further. However, as I said, having had the experience of wrangling a child poverty strategy, I am hugely sympathetic to the challenge involved, so I hope that she will find me an encourager on these issues. I want to begin, like other noble Lords, by acknowledging progress and welcome facets in the child poverty strategy: the tone, for example, as well as involving families who experience poverty. That is hugely important and I want to return to that at the end. I gave my maiden speech in the debate on the Bill to abolish the two-child limit in universal credit, which is hugely welcome, and for which Lib Dems have been arguing for some time. Some 450,000 children will be lifted out of poverty as a result of that.

However, while the child poverty strategy is a welcome direction, it is not an adequate destination. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that even after the measures in the child poverty strategy, the DWP’s own forecast suggests that 4 million children will still be in poverty in 2029-30. There is some disagreement about the number of children who will be lifted out of poverty as a result of the strategy—the Resolution Foundation suggests that it is probably around 300,000—but, either way, it is not enough to celebrate slowing this rise; the country needs to reverse it. There is a question about what we do from a big-picture perspective, there are areas where I hope we might go further and some other areas where I hope the child poverty strategy might be brought into conversation with wider cross-government work, where the child poverty strategy may be the key to our thinking about what else we need to do as a nation.

It seems to me that the single biggest hole in the strategy is that there are no binding targets. Whatever you might think about Scotland’s delivery, in Scotland the statutory child poverty targets have provided a framework to hold Ministers to account. My first question to the Minister is therefore: why are there no binding targets? Are the Government willing to be held to account on this, and will they think again?

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, spoke about a need for a human rights approach. I would argue that child rights impact assessments would be hugely helpful, for example, in helping us understand what is happening.

A number of noble Lords spoke about the benefit cap. I had long-standing prior form on the benefit cap in making myself distinctly unpopular in government. I was not sure whether you are supposed to admit to when you lose battles in government, but the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, began by speaking about battles that she lost in government, and I think it was pretty on the record that I lost that one. I use this opportunity to urge the Government to think again on the benefit cap; otherwise, the good work that has been done with the reversal of the two-child limit in universal credit risks being undone. At the very least, we could lift the rate and raise it in line with inflation.

I just want to talk about free school meals. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester devoted all his speech to this topic, and it was a very welcome and informed contribution. I very much welcome the expansion of free school meals to all families on universal credit, but, again, underregistration risks leaving people behind. The September expansion is a perfect moment to switch to a national opt-out or auto-enrolment system using data the Government already hold—for example, the warm home discount. So my next question to the Minister is: will they think again and introduce a national auto-enrolment alongside this September’s rollout so that no eligible child slips through the cracks?

The child poverty strategy has some measures around school uniform, but I would argue again that we could go further; we could agree a cap on the cost of school uniform, which would make such a difference to so many families.

Lastly, as I read the child poverty strategy, the thing that occurred to me most of all was how so many of these topics feel very similar to the things that we were trying to address in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and yet we are facing into a very different world. I suppose it left me a little nervous about whether the child poverty strategy is being brought into conversation with the big strategies and challenges that as a country we are facing now, around food security, the impact of global conflict and the impact of climate change. All these are going to fall disproportionately on the poorest families, and my view is that it is their perspective that might hold the key to helping us to understand how we as a nation might tackle those bigger challenges. I urge the Government to use what they have already done in their strategy, bringing in the perspectives of those affected by poverty into conversation with a much wider strategy.