Child Poverty

Lord Freud Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on child poverty in the United Kingdom.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, the IFS report is an interesting addition to the work on tackling child poverty in the UK, but the Government do not believe that it is possible to predict poverty levels with any certainty so far away. Poverty figures rely on the performance of the economy, on people’s behaviours and on government policy. As the report acknowledges, these cannot be predicted effectively over this timescale.

[Lord Dubs]

My Lords, it is disappointing that the Minister chose to brush aside a very sound piece of work, which I am sure he has read and looked at in great detail—or his officials have. Is it not alarming that a reputable organisation with sound analytical methods has predicted that child poverty is likely to increase by 1 million by 2020? Even if the figures are a bit out, the fact is that they are going up alarmingly, and child poverty is such a damaging blight on our society.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I have read the report with great interest and not relied on my officials. There are a lot of very valuable things in it. One of the most interesting things, as the noble Lord will be aware, is the uncertainty caused by the way in which absolute poverty is measured. The report says that because the rather unreliable RPI measure is used, the figure is 10 percentage points higher, whereas if the CPI measure were used it would be only 1.5 percentage points higher. The report states that we should look at that very closely, which we are doing.

[The Lord Bishop of Birmingham]

My Lords, notwithstanding the Minister’s scepticism about the report, would he be kind enough to tell us about some of the ways in which he and the Government are considering substantive measures to close the gap and reduce child poverty if the report’s predictions are proved right?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are currently consulting on child poverty and we are committed to the Child Poverty Act and the targets in it, but we are looking at better measures for tackling it. The academic research tells us that the best predictors of poverty are worklessness in parents and low educational attainment, and that one of the most effective ways of getting out of poverty for those children is for them to achieve a better educational outcome.

[Lord Kinnock]

After the last two answers, is not the Minister going to conclude that he has been taking refuge in statistics and semantics rather than addressing the fundamental question raised by my noble friend, which relates to the level of child poverty in this relatively affluent country? Is it not clear that, even if the institute’s calculations were significantly wrong, we would still be talking about a rise of more than 500,000 in the number of children in poor families in the foreseeable future in the 21st century? Can the Minister give us his own objective view of whether that is morally, socially and economically acceptable, or whether it is appalling?

[Lord Freud]

What is vital with child poverty is that we decide on how to tackle it. Under the last Government, we found that enormous amounts of money were spent on tackling it without hardly moving a figure. In the last few years of that Government, it hardly shifted. The noble Lord can look at the figures himself. We spend 3.6% of GDP on children and families; we are the second highest in the UNICEF measures, and we get precious little bang for our buck. We end up well down the table in performance for how children do. We need to work out how to solve child poverty and not worry about income transfers, which do not achieve the outcome.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords—

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[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

Is the Minister aware that child poverty and poverty generally are not evenly spread across the United Kingdom? We have areas that are totally desperate. For instance, the south Wales valleys have twice the level of poverty than other places in the UK. What are the Minister and the Government doing to bridge that gap and somehow even out the issue of child poverty and other poverty in the United Kingdom?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords, there is a lot of variation around the country on child poverty. Again, I go back to the UNICEF report, which came out recently and which I found fascinating. Finland, which spends only 2.5% of its GNP on children and families, comes out very near the top. One thing that is so special about Finland is the emphasis that it puts on early years education, which seems to have a big impact there. We have to get to the causes of poverty and not just look at the pure measure.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, is the Minister aware, having quoted the recent UNICEF report, that other recent reports, including from UNICEF, concluded that under the last Government child well-being increased substantially? It is very worrying that more recent reports and evidence now suggest that, under this Government, child deprivation is increasing dramatically. Is it not a concern to him that jeopardising the chances of children is a serious matter?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I could not agree more. One of the most dismaying things that I have ever read is the 2007 UNICEF report that put us right at the bottom in terms of child well-being. The latest report from 2011 shows us crawling up four places, but we have a long way to go and we need to find the right ways in which to help children genuinely to get out of poverty.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, is not the related problem of feral children who engage in gang warfare and drug dealing and whose parents are not parenting properly even more serious? The solution to that is shown to be provided increasingly by the new technical colleges which motivate such children and teach them a skill. They then start to want to learn generally. That is the sort of measure that really addresses our problems rather than just giving out money.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are in the middle of a genuine consultation on how to tackle child poverty. Maintaining the income measure so that we know what is happening but getting at the measures that will make a real underlying difference to entrenched poverty is absolutely vital in that exercise.