Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Lords Chamber

My fear is that, unless we include an amendment of the kind that the right reverend Prelate has suggested, or unless the Minister can give a clear commitment to the House at this point that a statutory measure of poverty will be developed on the basis set out in the amendment, perhaps looking particularly at material poverty, this constituency may get lost because it is so alien to the experience of many of us. As is so often the case, the people with the highest needs—those who need the most attention in our society—often have the smallest voices and are the least well represented, so I beg the Minister to give the assurances that the right reverend Prelate has asked for, and I look forward to his response.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate has made a very convincing, strong argument for retaining income and, as he pointed out, deprivation measures. We talk about income measures as shorthand but it is important to remember that the measures in the Child Poverty Act include a deprivation measure.

The 2012 consultation, to which the right reverend Prelate referred, said:

“There can be no doubt that income is a key part of our understanding of child poverty … Household income has a significant impact on childhood and life chances … The impact of growing up in a low income household can last a lifetime”.

That consultation was premised on income being one element of a multidimensional measure, and it made it clear that the Government are not playing a zero-sum game with child poverty measurement as between income and multidimensional indicators. It is not clear what has changed since then. Why have the Government changed their view on that? Do they no longer believe that income is important, despite the evidence, as the right reverend Prelate said, from their own life chances review, which made very clear the impact of low-income, low-material resources on life chances, and despite the advice that they received from their own Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission? Its response to the consultation was that any new multidimensional measure,

“should be supplementary to the existing framework”,

and it looked to the Government to make clear their commitment,

“to maintain the centrality of income in measuring poverty”.

More recently, it said that it is simply not credible to try to improve the life chances of poor children without acknowledging the importance of income on those life chances and that, without an assessment of income, any measure would be inadequate.

As the right reverend Prelate said, the response to the consultation was overwhelmingly in favour of maintaining measures of income and deprivation. That included a response from the Royal Statistical Society, the academic scientific community and civil society organisations. In Committee, my noble friend Lady Blackstone, who is not in her place today, asked what alternative scientific advice the Government had to, in a sense, overturn that overwhelming response, but I do not think that we heard an answer to that.

It may seem rather academic and people may ask: why are we talking about measures; what does this matter? Actually, it matters a lot, and it is quite significant that a petition has been presented. Over 50,000 people care enough about this, and one woman in the country collected these signatures because people do care. If there is no statutory obligation for income and deprivation measures, it looks as though the Government think it simply does not matter if people do not have a sufficient income to live on.

There is no mention of targets in the amendment, unlike the amendment that was put forward in Committee, acknowledging, as the right reverend Prelate said, that the Government are reluctant to sign up to targets. In Committee, all I heard in response to the arguments put was an argument against targets. I did not hear any convincing argument against low-income and deprivation measures. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will think again and respond positively to the right reverend Prelate’s amendment.

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, on this kind of issue I am usually very much on the side of those who are sorry for those who have problems. But I think a much stronger case would be made if the amendment could be rephrased so as to take into account the possibility that, at times, the family themselves ought to do more to create the income that they so desperately need. I have not come prepared with any evidence but, being involved in issues around child poverty, I hear a good deal to suggest that a number of families prefer to live on benefits rather than go to work. I do not blame them for doing that, but I think they should share their responsibility in providing that income which, indeed, is so essential.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

The noble Baroness is making a presumption that the suite of four is self-reinforcing and that the weaknesses of one are balanced by the strengths of the others, but I hope that I have been able to describe that there is no necessary reason why they should be self-reinforcing. In fact, they may be taking us all in the wrong direction. That is the presumption that I challenge.

On the right reverend Prelate’s points, the consultation demonstrated support for a wider range of measures of child poverty beyond income. More than 90% of respondents showed support for measures that drive the Government’s action in tackling child poverty. Our new approach—this is a point that the noble Baroness made—has been informed by our evidence review, which underlies the crucial importance that worklessness and educational attainment play in improving children’s life chances.

Poverty is highly complex and affected by a large number of interrelated factors. The evidence review showed that low income is one of several factors affecting educational outcomes, but worklessness is the most important driver of low income. The evidence also showed that the best way to increase incomes and exit poverty is to enter work. We want to drive the action that will make that difference. That is why the two measures cover worklessness and educational attainment.

On the point about working families with low incomes, work remains the best route out of poverty. Around 75% of poor children in families where parents move into full employment leave poverty altogether. We will return to this on a later amendment, so I will not go into it in any more detail.

The income measures that the amendment would introduce are essentially symbolic. It is important that we recognise this for both sides of the debate. The Opposition have laid out their argument of how these measures are a symbol of where the Government should focus their action. However, to us they are a symbol of the old world—of how easy it is for Governments to be incentivised to push people’s incomes £1 above the poverty line without any real transformation to their lives. This is of huge importance to us as we want to move away from these types of drivers and instead focus on the right type of actions.

In response to the concerns from the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about the information, the Government have made a strong commitment to continue to publish the HBAI figures. I should add that HBAI is a national statistic. That means that it complies with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, which states that it must be produced independently of political influence. That may be a stronger position to protect the statistics than a statutory base. It is hard for them to be removed.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

The Minister says that the figures are independent. What if those producing them are under great financial pressure, and they look around and think, “What measures can we stop? What data can we stop collecting and statistics stop analysing?”. They could say, “The Government show that they’re not interested in these statistics, so perhaps we should stop analysing them”. Whatever the Minister says, without a statutory obligation we cannot be absolutely sure that those statistics will continue to be produced and analysed. That is one reason why we had a bit of a debate on this in Committee. The Minister said that he thought that the only real difference between us was the word “statutory”. That is why we believe that statutory accountability is so important.

[Lord Freud]

We have made this commitment to continue to publish the HBAI figures. They are national statistics and part of what is almost a huge industry of measurement around the world, as countries do it in the same way. It is always conceivable that that outcome could happen, but in the real world it is almost unthinkable.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

If countries around the world are doing it in the same way, does that not suggest that it is the right way?