Poverty and Disadvantage

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the right reverend Prelate and fully endorse his last point as I am sure noble Lords thought I would. I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for reminding us that government must address the drivers of poverty and disadvantage. There is scant time here to revisit the arguments made during stages of the Welfare Reform and Work Act, but it marked an important policy shift away from income-based poverty measures and targets because they are,

“a poor test of whether children’s lives are genuinely improving”.

It placed a new duty on the Secretary of State to report annually on the educational attainment of children in England and on the number of children in workless families.

As I reminded the House during the debate on A Manifesto to Strengthen Families, which I published with many colleagues here and in the other place, the Minister for Welfare Reform also promised that alongside statutory measures of education there would be,

“a range of non-statutory indicators to measure progress against the other root causes of child poverty, which include but are not limited to family breakdown, addiction and problem debt”.—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1585.]

When I asked the Minister why the existing family stability indicator had been dropped when the new indicators were published earlier this year, he replied that the quality of relationships within a family had a greater impact on child outcomes than the structure of the family. I urge the Government not to pit family structure against relationship quality as both are important. Saying that people parenting alone, who are usually women and frequently on a low income, face disadvantages that make one of the hardest jobs much harder does not stigmatise them; rather it does credit to the challenges they face instead of minimising them.

My second point, is that Sir Martin Narey, chair of the North Yorkshire Coast Opportunity Area, told the “Today” programme yesterday that what underlies everything, and is not about money, is parental engagement. He wants to get parents, especially those of disadvantaged children, to realise how much better in life their kids can do if they have good literacy, speech and communication skills.

I went to see Ed Vainker in Reach Academy Feltham at the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, when he was Schools Minister. Ed Vainker also realises that engaging parents in his school is essential for fulfilling his ambition to crash through the attainment ceiling. He is working with his local authority and other local partners to set up a family hub in the school so that parents can get any help they need with parenting skills and in other areas. The overall aim is for teachers to work in harness with them so that children enjoy the best conditions for learning at home as well as in school.

Will the Minister inform the House how opportunity areas are partnering with parents to improve their children’s learning and well-being? Strengthening families should be their first priority and the thread running through all they do. If it is not, another important initiative to help another generation of children will fail.