Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, throughout our debates on the Bill, we have all consistently expressed our desire to see child poverty in our nation reduced and, ultimately, eradicated. We have different views about how this might best be achieved, and about the impact the Bill will have. I continue to have deep concerns about its impact. I fear that it will lead to more children and families being poor.

Having said that, I fully agree that, in most cases, the best way out of poverty is through work, and work that is better paid. I remain unconvinced that the measures in the Bill will have the complete effect suggested. Among the many concerns that a wide range of noble Lords and those outside the House have expressed has been the matter of the publication of the information and statistics on financial poverty. The Government have consistently noted that to work simply on financial targets in relation to child poverty is inadequate, and I have consistently agreed.

I meet children from very affluent backgrounds who are poor. They are poor because they lack being loved. Sometimes, their parents are working so many hours to maintain a wealthy lifestyle that they give no time to their child. Such children in homes where money is plentiful have been emotionally starved and, generally, spiritually malnourished. Theirs is a different kind of poverty.

I meet children from very poor backgrounds, in terms of financial income, who are rich in being loved and cared for by their parents or parent. They are emotionally strong, doing well at school and have a wealth of spiritual life. In many cases, they have a parent, or sometimes two, in work but on low wages and working only part-time, the latter often because the parent prioritises—rightly, in my view—time with their child over time away from them simply to earn more cash. They are not poor in very many ways.

It is right to look properly at life chances, therefore, because issues of educational achievement, work, housing and the like have a serious impact on children’s lives now and their long-term life chances.

There is also a danger that, with only financial modelling of poverty, the very poorest are not properly helped. Strategies can be worked that just lift people above a specific target, rather than supporting those who are persistently and consistently the very poorest in financial terms. However, along with the almost unanimous view of academics and practitioners from the areas of healthcare, social care, education, economics and other disciplines, I share the conviction that lack of finance is one of the factors that places children in poverty, and that this affects their life chances. The evidence is clear that income poverty impacts cognitive development, school achievement, social and emotional development and health.

Absolutely, that is compounded significantly when other factors are also considered, and they too must be tackled, but not to take seriously the reality of financial poverty would be a major mistake. As the wise proverbialist Agur, from the book of Proverbs, said:

“give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you

and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God”.

The four indicators that have been used since 2003 work well together. It is how they are worked together that matters: any one standing alone and being used alone is inadequate. So I am delighted that the Government have decided to listen to the arguments and agreed to make a statutory provision for the continued publication of those figures. I think that a persistent poverty figure could well be a very useful addition, although how it is arrived at will need to be as robustly worked through as have been the existing, well-tested measures. It will be important, if it is to be a valuable addition, that it be as rigorously tested as they are.

In conclusion, I thank the Minister, and his team, for the time that he has given us and for how they have listened and worked with us to reach the conclusion that stands before us today in relation to publishing financial child poverty figures. These last weeks have been an interesting journey for myself and my colleagues on this Bench. We are pleased to have been able to serve those whom it is most important we serve well, the children in our nation who are living in poverty—a poverty which all of us must keep striving to end, and which I believe the publication of these figures will assist.

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for bringing forward his amendment, and I am pleased that the Government have seen sense on the need to publish these important measures. They will help policymakers and others better to understand the issues affecting child poverty and the levers that may be used to help to lift children out of poverty. The argument with the Government was never really about their life chances measures, which it is clear will provide an important point of reference for policy interventions in the incredibly complex and multifaceted problem of child poverty. It was about understanding that, while child attainment and parental worklessness are important to understanding the problem, the money in a parent’s pocket is still important to understand when seeking to help to lift children out of poverty.

I understand the Minister’s concerns that focusing entirely on income risks the “poverty plus a pound” approach to policy. However, I equally understand that, for example, an intervention in the cost of transport may help to boost attainment, because you can understand that the cost of the bus for extra classes costs more than most of the families that you are trying to help can actually afford. That means that you must have access to data on income; that is important. These four additional measures will help, and not hinder, the Government’s attempt to take a more active approach to this issue. I am particularly pleased with the inclusion of the long-term poverty measure in subsection (1)(d), and I suspect that there may even be policy officials within DWP itself who will find that measure helpful in developing interventions.

This is a good compromise and I am pleased that the Minister has been able to achieve it. Thank you.