King’s Speech

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friends to their important new ministerial roles, and our Government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity. A fundamental barrier, as recognised, is poverty, especially child poverty. That is closely linked to women’s poverty and is part of the intersecting inequalities which, as the Fairness Foundation argues convincingly, will if untackled prevent the achievement of the Government’s missions generally. It is clear from a growing body of research that progress on education and health requires progress on child poverty, the risk and depth of which grew to shocking levels under the previous Government. I thus applaud the promise of free breakfast clubs in primary schools and the regulation of school uniforms in the wonderfully titled children’s well-being Bill, although I hope we can in time look also to the extension of free school meals.

The manifesto commitment to an ambitious child poverty strategy is crucial to the achievement of the opportunity and other missions. The swift establishment of a child poverty task force and a new child poverty unit was music to my ears. The task force will rightly work with a range of stakeholders, which I hope will include the voices of those experiencing poverty. We can learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the Scottish and Welsh strategies, including the need for a clear action plan with targets. The targets set by the previous Labour Government, subsequently scrapped, helped to galvanise action at national and local levels. I also emphasise the need for the strategy to include children in migrant families, highlighted by the recent joint inquiry of the APPGs on poverty and migration into the effects on poverty of immigration, asylum and refugee policies, in which I was involved. A cross-government strategy will of course include the early years and good work, but repair of the social security system, badly damaged since 2010, has to be a central plank, as argued by charities in the field that see the impact of social security cuts on children and their families.

The opportunities mission plan states that it will:

“Make security the foundation of opportunity”.


It is therefore puzzling that it makes no mention of social security, the primary purpose of which is to guarantee financial security through social means. Shredded by post-2010 Governments, it no longer fulfils that purpose, so now is the time to put the security back into social security, to provide the foundation for opportunity. As the manifesto states:

“Delivering opportunities for all means that everyone should be treated with respect and dignity”.


That includes social security recipients and the language used when talking about them. Please let there be no talk of handouts. Social security is a human right.

Inevitably it will take time to repair the damage done but, following the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and many others, I urge the immediate abolition of the two-child limit, which currently affects 1.6 million children, otherwise I am afraid we will be developing a child poverty strategy with one hand tied behind our back. Together with the benefit cap, which also needs reviewing, it most hurts larger families, including some minority-ethnic families.

The implications for the opportunities mission of retaining the limit were brought out in a recent study by the CPAG—of which I am honorary president—the Church of England and others. Here is an example: a lone parent with three children told how her 12 year-old son had been off school for over one and a half weeks because she could not afford to replace his ripped school shoes, and the school threatened isolation all day if he wore black trainers. She said:

“My son is embarrassed for not being able to go to school and wasn’t even able to tell his friends why”.


Can we really not find the necessary money and investment in children? As Gordon Brown points out, we need to factor in the cost of not acting—for instance, in terms of children taken into care and the NHS.

Alongside the cuts directed at children are years of freezes and real-value cuts in benefit rates that have left them totally inadequate to meet basic needs, as evidence to the recent Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into benefit levels demonstrated. I hope the Government will conduct the kind of review called for by its report. I hope they will also heed its recommendation to extend the local authority household support fund. Even if it is a sticking plaster, filling some of the gaping holes in the social security system, it is a vital local lifeline. Due to expire in September, it would leave only the discretionary welfare assistance that replaced the Social Fund that many local authorities no longer provide. A temporary extension would provide stability, prevent even greater reliance on food banks and allow for consultation on a longer-term statutory local crisis support scheme.

In conclusion, to cite Gordon Brown again,

“we need a clear commitment from the current government to rebuild a social security system that will genuinely protect people”.

That was directed to the last Government, but I hope it will now fall on the more sympathetic ears of a Government who promise security and demolition of the barriers to opportunity, including the overwhelming barrier of child poverty.