Child Development

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord McFall of Alcluith]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester in raising this debate and I congratulate him on his speech. In an article for a national newspaper in April 2009, I castigated the Labour Government for their first ever omission from the Budget of their pledge to halve child poverty by 2010 and to eliminate it by 2020. I said that, at a time of economic crisis, their efforts had weakened. However, tackling child poverty is more important than ever in such times.

The background to the Labour Government’s attempts has to be analysed. During the 1980s, inequality rose faster in the UK than in any OECD country other than New Zealand. By 1997, we had the highest level of child poverty in the EU. The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies looked at the record of the Labour Government and said that they had halved the number of children in relative low-income poverty in the United Kingdom from 1998 to 2010, taking the figure down from 3.4 million to 1.7 million. Moreover, the number of children in absolute low-income poverty had fallen from 3.4 million to 1.4 million. It noted that, if the Government had just uprated benefits in line with inflation, more than 1.7 million children would still be living in poverty.

That is our record, which is a commendable one. In fact, the IFS said that it was the best record since it had started keeping records in 1961. However, the target was still missed by a substantial margin of 600,000 children. The question that the Labour Government asked at the time was: is ending child poverty a right or a responsibility? Correctly, they assumed the latter. That was why the Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, set the ambitious target of halving child poverty by 2010 and eliminating it by 2020. In doing so, the Government had both a narrative and a target.

That was reinforced by the Child Poverty Act 2010, which the coalition signed up to before entering government. However, to date we have neither a narrative nor demonstrable targets from the Government. Indeed, where the coalition is retaining income-based 2020-21 child poverty targets, there is absolutely no realistic chance of meeting them under current policies. The IFS, another respected institution, has said that.

If the Government believe that their targets are inappropriate, they should be both honest and explicit about it and set themselves objectives that they want to pursue. The question is still begging: how do we live up to the commitments that the Government have entered into? I said at the time of my article that we should dispel the false debate that is taking place over national debt because it is distracting us from the human face of the crisis. Those of us who have worked at community level, and witnessed the obstacles and impediments faced daily by low-income families, have heard parents express high aspirations for their children; but in our hearts and in our minds we realise that those aspirations will only lead to low life chances for these individuals, because they are deprived of opportunities given to the rest of us in society.

I know that ending child poverty is both a right for the individual child and a responsibility for society and government. I hope fellow Peers realise and accept that proposition. However, do not forget that tomorrow’s world starts with today’s children. I remind the House that at the Making British Poverty History event in April 2008, the Prime Minister said, quite simply and boldly:

“We can end child poverty—I mean it”.

This Chamber is still waiting for an answer as to when and how the Government are going to achieve that.