Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Bird Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bird]

107: After Clause 27, insert the following new Clause—
“Child poverty targets(1) The Secretary of State must, as soon as reasonably practicable and no later than 30 September 2026, and then at the start of each Parliament, lay regulations made by statutory instrument that establish binding child poverty targets.(2) Child poverty targets must include—(a) targets for reducing the number of children living in poverty,(b) targets for reducing the number of children living in deep poverty, and(c) timescales by which each target must be achieved.(3) The Secretary of State must lay an annual report before Parliament setting out—(a) steps they have taken to deliver on the child poverty targets, and(b) progress that has been made towards the child poverty targets.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would place a duty on the Secretary of State to set binding child poverty reduction targets in regulations at the start of each Parliament.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I am very pleased that this amendment is to be discussed again. What troubles me is that it could be such a small, insignificant thing to ask for targets from the Government. Are targets part of the armoury that we use to get rid of poverty? If we are endeavouring to get rid of poverty, we will need more than targets. We will need houses; we will need training for parents so that they do not pass poverty down to the next generation; we will need a Government who will converge and co-ordinate all the efforts into some form whereby they can say that they are disentangling the situation.

At the moment, we have eight government departments dealing with poverty. I imagine that if we did not have a Ministry of Defence and people decided to attack this country, we would form a Ministry of Defence, bring everything together and not leave it to eight different ministries. The same goes for poverty. Poverty is destroying us. Poverty is stopping schools delivering schooling: 30% of teachers’ time is spent on the problems that are caused when poverty enters the classroom. In our health service, 50% of people who suffer from cardiological—whatever you call it; forgive me, I have new teeth—are suffering from food poverty.

I have used this amendment to raise not only the question of targets but the point that the Government should use them. They should have others measuring their homework rather than doing it themselves. I have heard from the Government that, if you have targets, you tend to have people massaging the figures to make it look as though the targets are being achieved and that you then go after the low-hanging fruit because you do not get anywhere near the hardest to reach—you can achieve your targets by concentrating on the fact that it is easier to help those who are the low-hanging fruit.

Overall, my big question is whether targets could fit in a panoply of organised, convergent energy that is used to get rid of poverty. I am not here to talk just about just this amendment but about the fact that every Government I know have had all sorts of initiatives to get rid of poverty, but we never see the end of it. Some 4.5 million children are caught in poverty and that is a tremendous indictment not of this Government nor of the last one, and not even of the Government before that, but of the methodology. It is an inherited methodology that is passed down every generation of Government and takes the same form.

Let us please look at targets and be honest about them, and begin, as a society and as a Chamber, to look at the idea that we follow my example and put a lot of work into having a ministry of poverty prevention and cure. The problem is that 90% of all the money that is spent on poverty is spent on the emergency of poverty. We cannot put all our energy into the emergency; we must try to have prevention and cure.

I shall end there because I have not got an awful lot to say about targets. I have said everything; it is all in Hansard. I would love all noble Lords to consider that the Government should at least allow us our targets, and then we can look at all the other things that we need over the coming months and years where we converge and concatenate the energies necessary to get rid of poverty. I inherited poverty and that makes me a fierce warrior to end the inheritance of poverty. I started from behind. Most of those who live in poverty never get to the starting line. We cannot all be Boris Johnson. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of Amendment 107, to which I have added my name, moved by such a warrior against poverty, not least as it provides an opportunity to welcome the Government’s landmark child poverty strategy. Sadly, the Opposition did not think it important enough to ask for the Statement on it to be repeated in your Lordships’ House. I welcome, too, the strategy’s accompanying monitoring and evaluation frameworks, supported by a theory of change, based on clear measures and what it calls a “wide-ranging evidence base”. This includes hearing directly from children, young people and families with lived experience of poverty, building on the strong engagement with them during the strategy’s development.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 107, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to set legally binding child poverty reduction targets. I agree with other noble Lords that we have a shared objective to tackle child poverty. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for his commitment, the campaigning that he does and for the engagement with the Government on child poverty. We had a very good meeting, I thought, where we talked about the work of the Big Issue and the rightful challenge to the Government to ensure that the structure within government and the measurement of our objectives meet the challenge that has been set here. I will talk about how we will ensure that this happens.

I am proud that this Government have now published our child poverty strategy, going far beyond rhetoric—as one noble Lord suggested that we should do. But I do not agree with those who have argued that all Governments are the same or that the strategy lacks credibility. Several noble Lords have quoted the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Its annual poverty report, published yesterday, states that the child poverty strategy is “hugely welcome”—particularly after the last Government made no progress in reducing poverty. The foundation welcomes the child poverty strategy delivering the projected biggest reduction in child poverty in a single Parliament.

We have been clear that our wide-ranging child poverty strategy will see the largest reduction in child poverty by any Government in a single Parliament, lifting 550,000 children out of poverty, principally through the expansion of free school meals and removing the two-child limit. These are both things that this Government have already done—to take up the challenge set by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. But, of course, we need to measure and demonstrate progress being made on this strategy.

I completely take on board that challenge. That is why the monitoring and evaluation framework, which was published alongside the strategy, set out that a baseline report will be published in summer 2026, with annual reporting on progress thereafter. It will be quite clear what progress the Government are making in a range of areas, and it will be possible to hold this Government to account for delivering on this crucial strategy and on our objectives. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that it will be very clear to voters that this Government will make progress, as the previous Labour Government did, in tackling the scourge of child poverty.

We recognise that our approach to monitoring and evaluation will need to evolve and adapt, as the strategy must, reflecting the dynamic nature of poverty and the broader social and economic factors that influence it. Although I understand the powerful point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, about the government machinery for ensuring progress, I think a strength of the child poverty strategy is that it is explicitly cross-government. It recognises that it will need action in a range of different areas to tackle child poverty. I also take his point that there needs to be a central directing part of government. That is why we have committed to maintain a child poverty team with cross-government oversight by Ministers.

These clear reporting arrangements and the focus on child poverty within government show our commitment and leadership and will ensure that the progress that we make is transparent to all. We will continue to work closely with the whole sector committed to tackling child poverty, as we have done in developing the strategy. We believe that this is the best approach, rather than introducing statutory targets. For these reasons, I hope I have provided some assurance about the commitment of this Government, the broad action that we will take as a result of the strategy, and the measurement and evaluation that we will put in place in order to ensure that the public and this House can hold us to account for progress. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Thank you very much. I have decided to join the Conservative Party. Can I meet the noble Earl afterwards and fill in the forms? Forgive me, I was only joking. I have never received such praise in the House.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I was trying to say that we need a new toolkit to dismantle poverty. Having a way of measuring it and of taking people to task because we say, “This is what you said you would achieve” can never be, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, the be-all and end-all. It must be part of the road towards the accumulation of evidence, the accumulation of opportunity and the accumulation of thinking that gets us somewhere we have never been before.

I do not want to pooh-pooh the Government or any Government for achieving the remarkable removal of 450,000 young people from poverty, but what about the other 4 million? That is the real problem. The real problem is that we are passing from generation to generation. A load of people who I have identified— 90% of the people I work with in homelessness, 90% of the people I work with in long-term unemployment, and 90% of the people I work with in the custodial system—come from the inheritance of poverty. They inherit poverty in the same way that Boris Johnson or David Cameron or anybody else inherits their position in the pecking order. If we have a situation where we have millions of people never arriving at the starting line of life, we have a major problem. That is where we need to concentrate our energy.