Poverty

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the noble Lord very much for his question. I entirely agree that the focus must be on prevention. We strongly believe that it was right to replace the income-related child poverty targets, which we had until 2010, with statutory measures of parental worklessness and children’s educational attainment—the areas that can make the biggest difference to children’s outcomes. We believe that the way to help people out of poverty is through employment. A great deal of progress has been made and employment is now at a record high level. However, although record levels of employment are great, one in eight children across the UK still lives in a workless family, and we need to tackle that. A prevention unit is a great idea but the reality is that we can perform that function by working across government, as we are doing, on the strategy that we have now developed within Work and Pensions.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will know that the evidence on social mobility and what makes social mobility work is now very strong. Two of the factors are excellent childcare and excellent early years education. Why, then, do the Government not accept that and put more money into that kind of early intervention for children?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, we are working on our strategy for childcare because we understand that, if we are to have people in work, we have to have the right system in place supporting childcare that works for everyone. I know that colleagues across government are looking at this at the moment, improving on the support for young families that we already have. The reality is that we want to focus on prevention through getting more people into work, because we know that that increases people’s confidence and their health and well-being, and all that impacts on the child and their future levels of attainment and well-being.