Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission

Lord Peston Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, there needs to be a massive programme to improve both poverty and social mobility. It needs to be done right the way from foundation years, through school years and the transition period, and even to adulthood. The particular programmes that we will see will come out of this general approach. I cannot give any assurances on any particular approach at this stage, although I am personally most sympathetic to the concept of mentoring.

[Lord Peston]

Does the Minister recall Scott Fitzgerald’s remark to Ernest Hemingway many years ago? “The rich are different from us”, Fitzgerald said. “Yes”, Hemingway replied, “they’ve got more money”. There is no mystery about child poverty, is there? What children need if they are not to be impoverished is more money, which means that a policy of cutting public expenditure benefits is not the right way of setting about helping them.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, regrettably, I was not there when that remark was made. However, I absolutely insist that income transfer is not the way to solve poverty; we need a much more comprehensive approach. Recent research tells us that in-kind support is more effective than income transfers for children in poverty. We are making a sustained, long-term attempt to lift people out of not only poverty of income but poverty of aspiration and poverty of outcomes.