Child Poverty

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Let me make clear why I do not think it is good enough. We are second as regards the number of income transfers—that comes out in the UNICEF report—but we are 22nd out of 35 countries as regards relative child poverty. That shows that we are just not getting value for our money. I can say that we are making arrangements to ensure that school meals continue in basically the same way, although longer term I am looking to try to incorporate that in the universal credit even more tightly and to make some improvements.

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is widespread scepticism about relative poverty tables because no matter how much money is transferred to children, relatively there will always be others who have less? It is widely thought that one of the safeguards against poverty is having two parents who stay together, preferably with one of them in work.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, there is a lot of debate about how to measure poverty. I believe that relative income measures have an important place, as do absolute measures, but it is quite true that we need to have strategies that go to the fundamentals that create poverty rather than worrying about trying to ameliorate those by income transfers. It is more important to have a balanced strategy.