Child Welfare

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Well, indeed. The whole House will agree that every child needs and deserves the best possible start in life. The noble Baroness referred to early years and childcare. All three and four year-olds and the least advantaged two year-olds can access 15 hours a week of funded early education. The proportion of all children achieving a good level of development is improving year on year, but it remains work in progress.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that the Government were committed to children and children’s rights. I have to say to him that the evidence is quite to the contrary. The DWP’s own figures in 2015 showed that 28% of children in the UK were living in poverty, yet last year the Government abolished the Child Poverty Unit and abandoned child poverty reduction targets. That does not seem to be in any sense a commitment to children. Surely children should be at the forefront of all government policy. Do the Minister and what I might describe as his caretaker Government intend to introduce the recommendations of the UN committee report or have they implicitly accepted that they are on borrowed time and it is only a matter of time before a Labour Government come into power who are really committed to children’s rights and to ending poverty?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, poverty is something that the whole House needs to take seriously, as we do. We are very aware that despite record levels of employment, there are still around 1.3 million children in workless households across the UK. This is something that we are really looking to address. We need to ensure that children are in households where work gets them out of poverty.