Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Frank Field]

The report that I issued made that very point. It said that we should continue to publish the poverty data and that, alongside them, we should have the life chances data.

Of course, there is much more to this debate than what is on the record. Historically, there has been a big divide between those who see money as the only agent to counter poverty—it clearly makes it easier for people if they have more money—and those who ask whether money actually transforms life chances in the way we wish. That is the question that I posed. Specifically, we wanted to know, while taking account of the importance of income and class in determining life chances, whether there were drivers of poverty more powerful even than income and class. The report lists the most powerful factors when income and class are held constant—those factors that enable us to make progress even if we are not making the progress that we would like to see on a fairer distribution of income.

Again, I make a plea to the House. Although we ought to debate the adequacy of the minimum levels of income, Opposition Members and the many Government Members who are disturbed by the growing and gross inequalities in our society must not think that we will deal with those through benefit changes, important though they are. Throughout the western world, there are clearly great engine drivers of inequality that serve up to the rich—particularly to the very, very rich—rewards that are grotesque when compared with the average, let alone with those who earn the least in our communities. There is no debate about that. The debate is about where, at any given point in time, we should put taxpayers’ money. Up to now, everybody has been talking about this as though the Government have money. Governments have to tax our constituents to get money to redistribute it, and we must win people’s support for that.

The House is beginning slowly to accept that it is dangerous to have a welfare system that is more generous to those out of work than to those in work, which is why I particularly welcome the Chancellor’s strategy of moving towards a living wage and implementing that over the life of the Parliament. It is only a beginning, but it is very important. If we are successful in moving to that living wage without big unemployment consequences—I believe that we will be—that will give us more freedom to manoeuvre on where benefit levels should be set.

My plea is that we should not think that this is either one thing or the other. The Government will publish the data, and I am sure that if we had a chat to them they could do so alongside the life chances data. That is not really what the debate is about; the debate is about those who believe that the only agent of change is on the income front, and I do not wish to concede ground to anyone in emphasising the importance of income, especially for those at the bottom of the pile who are working or who are not working. We have the report on the foundation years, and if we are serious about trying to prevent poor children from becoming poor adults, we need a different strategy from the one we adopted until that point. It was all about cash transfers—important as they are—and I thought it was inadequate.

Reception teachers said that by the time children come to school they already know who is going to succeed and who will not. I also started asking other people such as health visitors whether they could tell us which children entering toddlerhood would be successful in later life. Midwives have clear views when mothers turn up for their first scan about who has drawn the short straw and who has not. If we are serious about this strategy—I make this plea to the Government because we will need powers to add these measurements once we have agreed on them—we must measure whether we are increasing life chances by having more parents who are ready for the birth of their child, whether the interventions that we make after that will be successful and see more children successfully enter toddlerhood, and above all whether more children are entering school ready to benefit from the powers of education.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

Is measuring at key stage 4 when a young person is 16 so utterly after the horse has bolted that it will not make any impact? Teachers report a year’s difference in a child’s ability to communicate and learn by the time they are five, and we need to change that. No Opposition Members are talking about money or life chances; most of us are arguing for both.

[Frank Field]

The genuineness of the hon. Lady in making that point shows how the debate is changing—it was not always about that issue and I am grateful for her intervention. Let me re-emphasise her point. I was staggered when the Secretary of State said that one of children’s key life chances is at age 16, given that he has done more than anybody in the House to teach us about how crucial life chances are before age five, if we are really to change people’s opportunities and allow them to develop their best selves. I hope that when we conclude the debate, the Minister will say more about how important it is to weight those life chances before age five. By all means we should measure children at 16 and all sorts of other ages if we wish, but if we are serious about changing the life chances of the very poorest children in our constituencies, we must consider a series of life chances long before they reach school. Every reception teacher I met would say that life chances have been decided by the time that children come into school.

I welcome how the debate has developed in the past 10 years, and I hope I have stated clearly why I think the Lords are mistaken with Lords amendment 1, and how much I agree with the case put by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), and by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) who stated her support for Lords amendments 8 and 9.