Child Poverty

Debate between Lord Bird and Baroness Buscombe

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, of course we take the issue of poverty very seriously, although inequality has fallen. Tackling disadvantage will always be a priority for this Government. We have already taken steps to tackle food inequality by providing free school meals and our Healthy Start vouchers. We are also investing up to £26 million in school breakfast clubs along with £9 million to provide meals and activities for thousands of disadvantaged children during the summer holidays, which is something that has not been done before. We continue to spend more than £95 billion a year on working-age welfare benefits.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, if we were to tackle the low-wage economy and the low social security economy that goes with it, we would lift people out of poverty. There is no way that young people can go to school and lead a full life if their parents are on, at best, between £5 and £9 an hour.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, we have taken strong action to support working families. We now have the national living wage and so on, but I agree entirely with the noble Lord that it is incredibly important to look closely at low pay and issues around debt. The Government are doing this, and indeed it is something that is close to my heart. Sometimes debt goes to the heart of why people are in poverty. We need to get much closer to this issue and in the coming months we will be introducing a breathing space to help people out of debt. We are also keen to ensure that children learn how to cope with money because that, as well as a low-wage economy, is often at the core of where things go wrong.

Poverty in the United Kingdom

Debate between Lord Bird and Baroness Buscombe

Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I am disappointed that the noble Baroness thinks that the Government are not listening. Only last week, she heard directly from front-line staff at the Department for Work and Pensions—I am grateful to her for coming to the department—about the vital work they do 24/7 to ensure that claimants receive the right support. In turn, I listened to the special rapporteur on Radio 4 say that people receive no funds for between five and 12 weeks when they enrol on to universal credit. That is just plain wrong and, frankly, undermines the credibility of this report.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, will the Government supply us with a plan for how they are going to rescue that wonderful thing, which is that work gives social mobility and social opportunity, at a time when it is obvious that in-work poverty is increasing at a greater rate than out-of-work poverty?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I greatly support what the noble Lord has always said—we believe in giving people a hand up, rather than a handout, which is about empowering people and giving them the right support. Each universal credit claimant has a caseworker and a work coach who gives them the right support in their family or personal surroundings and then, through little steps at a time, helps and encourages them into work to support them, their family and their children. They are empowered, given confidence and lifted out of poverty.

Poverty

Debate between Lord Bird and Baroness Buscombe

Thursday 13th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird]

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Henley on 6 March (HL5600) concerning early intervention programmes, what steps they are taking to prioritise their focus on the root causes of poverty and disadvantage.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Buscombe) (Con)]

My Lords, tackling the root causes of child poverty and disadvantage includes taking action on parental worklessness. New analysis carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions shows that children living in workless families are significantly more disadvantaged and achieve poorer outcomes than other children, including those in lower-income working families. Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families, published on 4 April, provides a framework for a continued focus on improving children’s outcomes now and in the future.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I thank the Minister very much for her reply. I would like to make the obvious statement that prevention—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bird]

Oh! I am sorry. I will not make a statement; I will ask a question. Forgive me. Could Her Majesty’s Government move inexorably towards a situation where we could put prevention right at the centre of all the work we do? We know that prevention pays off. We know that when money is spent on prevention, it reaps enormous benefits. Could Her Majesty’s Government look at the possibility of creating a prevention unit across both Houses and all parties, so that we could at last make sense of the need to prevent people falling into poverty because too many people are stuck in poverty and are not getting out?

[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.