Inequality

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I was a nutritionist before I went into politics. Some people on low incomes might find the suggestion that their children were necessarily malnourished to be insulting—in fact, rich people may well be malnourished. Malnutrition and undernutrition are two different things. Malnutrition obviously correlates with inadequate diet, but not necessarily with poverty.

The 4 million figure to which the noble Lord refers is for the number of children living in low-income households, relative to the population as a whole. There is no evidence to suggest that there are 4 million children in food-insecure households. However, I accept his point about food banks. As he will know, the reasons for that are many and varied. I also accept that the initial rollout of UC led to some of the proliferation of food banks.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, is it possible to accept the fact that we would be able to ride a coach and horses through those figures over the next five or 10 years if we did something about the 35% of children who we fail at school? Let us put education first. When you look at that 35%, they are the people who have all the cheap jobs and are the long-term unemployed, as well as filling up our A&Es.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I could not agree more with the noble Lord that education is absolutely key to good nutritional status and prospects for employment in future life.