The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairmen: Mr. Martin Caton, † Robert Key

† Baron, Mr. John (Billericay) (Con)

† Barrett, John (Edinburgh, West) (LD)

† Blackman, Liz (Erewash) (Lab)

† Buck, Ms Karen (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab)

† Gauke, Mr. David (South-West Hertfordshire) (Con)

† Goodman, Helen (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions)

† Howell, John (Henley) (Con)

† Keeble, Ms Sally (Northampton, North) (Lab)

† Mallaber, Judy (Amber Valley) (Lab)

† Morgan, Julie (Cardiff, North) (Lab)

† Mudie, Mr. George (Leeds, East) (Lab)

† Reed, Mr. Jamie (Copeland) (Lab)

† Selous, Andrew (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con)

† Stuart, Mr. Graham (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)

† Timms, Mr. Stephen (Financial Secretary to the Treasury)

† Webb, Steve (Northavon) (LD)

Chris Stanton, Sarah Davies, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Column number: 125

Public Bill Committee

Tuesday 27 October 2009

(Morning)

[Robert Key in the Chair]

Child Poverty Bill

Written evidence to be reported to the House

CP 10 Equality and Human Rights Commission

Clause 1

Duty of Secretary of State to ensure that targets are met

10.30 am

Andrew Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con): I beg to move amendment 59, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, at end insert—

‘(e) the reductions in the causes of poverty targets in section [The reductions in the causes of poverty targets].’.

The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 3—The reductions in the causes of poverty targets—

‘(1) The Secretary of State shall make regulations setting out the causes of poverty targets.

(2) Such targets may include, but are not limited to:

(a) low educational attainment and erratic school performance;

(b) school leavers not in education, employment or training;

(c) registrations on the Child Protection Plan;

(d) teenage smoking and obesity;

(e) teenage pregnancy;

(f) children in homes with drug and alcohol addiction;

(g) children growing up in jobless households;

(h) serious personal debt.’.

Andrew Selous: Good morning, Mr. Key. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in the scrutinising and the amending part of our Public Bill Committee deliberations. As far as the Opposition are concerned, amendment 59 and new clause 3 are significant, and I hope that you will permit me to speak for a little time on them. They go to the heart of the Bill, dealing with the issue that was discussed extensively in our evidence sessions about getting the balance right between dealing with the causes of poverty—the pathways that lead families and children into lives of poverty—and alleviating its symptoms and effects.

I say to Government Members that amendment 59 and new clause 3 do not detract in any way from the existing income and material deprivation targets in clauses 2 to 5. The amendment and the new clause will leave those clauses, which we support, absolutely intact.

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I say emphatically that the proposals are not wrecking amendments. They would put in the Bill an additional target that would help us to achieve the 2020 target and do the serious work of reducing the various pathways that lead families and children into poverty, not just up to 2020, but well beyond that date.

Steve Webb (Northavon) (LD): This is an interesting proposal, and I look forward to hearing the hon. Gentleman develop the detail of his argument. I want to ask some overarching questions about his approach. I suspect that he—indeed, like my colleagues—has in the past condemned the culture of central Government setting a target for this, a target for that and so on. The Bill already has four targets, and his new clause would add perhaps another eight. Is there some inconsistency there? How does the hon. Gentleman reconcile the two?

Andrew Selous: The hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely fair and proper point, as he often does. I am not someone who seeks extra targets for the sake of it, and I accept his general point. In particular, when we come on to part 2 of the Bill, which deals with local government, my colleagues and I may want to include fewer targets and give local authorities in particular slightly more freedom in their approach. Hopefully, the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West will support us in that.

My worry, as the Committee heard extensively during the witness sessions, centres on the danger of keeping the current targets alone. They may drive policy in the wrong direction, keeping it in the area of income transfer—important as that is—without dealing with some of the serious issues that cause families to be in poverty in the first place. We do not propose imposing extra targets in the Bill lightly—we do so for a serious reason. We think that it will get to the heart of what we are all about in this Committee, which is turning lives around in a serious and substantial way. We fear that the four targets in the Bill alone might not do that, because the temptation, as has been said in Committee, could be just to whack out tax credits in 2018-19. Even the hon. Member for Northavon himself said that that might be the case.

John Howell (Henley) (Con): May I help my hon. Friend out? It seems to me, as someone who has devoted his life to eradicating targets, that the targets that would be included in the Bill by virtue of new clause 3 and amendment 59 merely recognise that that is the way in which local government is already working to tackle poverty. It is therefore an appropriate way to overcome the mismatch in the Bill between the income targets, which are macro-economic and central Government-related, and the activities that are taking place on the ground.

Andrew Selous: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has particular expertise in local government, in which he served with distinction for a number of years. In subsection (2)(a) to (h) of new clause 3, he and his local government colleagues will recognise a number of targets on which local authorities up and down the country are already seriously engaged to try to deal effectively with child poverty in their area.

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I was struck during the witness sessions by how much support there was—not just from the people who gave evidence—for the general approach that I am putting to the Committee.

Judy Mallaber (Amber Valley) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman refers to the witness statements, but I quizzed the witnesses about the difficulty already referred to. We say that we should not have too many targets, yet the Opposition now suggest that we have a lot more targets. I could add another 20 to the list. Does he not accept that the Bill places two duties on the Secretary of State? The first relates to the minimum income targets, but the second relates to the strategy, which will be informed by the child poverty commission. Rather than us putting suggestions in the Bill, surely the commission should be doing that job.

Andrew Selous: The hon. Lady makes a perfectly fair point, but the danger is that if we stick with the targets that are in the Bill, from clauses 2 to 5, they and they alone will drive the strategy in clause 8, and it will be wholly directed to fulfilling—

Judy Mallaber rose—

Andrew Selous: Perhaps the hon. Lady will let me develop my argument a little further. The strategy will be wholly directed to fulfilling those targets; they will be statutory obligations on the Secretary of State.

We mentioned the witness sessions, so let me go through some of the points made in support of this general approach. The hon. Lady’s colleague, the hon. Member for Copeland, said at column 21 of Hansard on 20 October that he was concerned about not addressing the real cultural issues involved in leading families into poverty. The first thing that Councillor Paul Carter, the leader of Kent county council, spoke about, at column 51, was the tremendous importance of doing serious long-term work to get families out of poverty, which is what new clause 3 is about. In column 55, Kevan Collins, the chief executive of Tower Hamlets council, said that the Bill needed to be about breaking the cycles of inter-generational poverty.

In column 82 on 22 October, Charlotte Pickles from the Centre for Social Justice made the point that were we to increase benefit take-up alone, that would not break the cycle of inter-generational poverty. Indeed, the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North—perhaps she will speak for herself during the debate—said that targets were only part of the whole story, and I agree with her on that point.

Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, as he mentioned my name. My point is—there is cross-party consensus on this—that poverty is multi-dimensional, and it is addressed in the “Opportunity for all” strategy. There are many families and children whose poverty can be ascribed to many complex social and cultural factors. Among Labour Members, however, what underpins the Bill is the fact that the 2.9 million children living in poverty do so because they do not have enough money, and if we do not have a financially driven programme around benefits and wages and so forth in this Bill, of all Bills, we are in danger of missing nine out of 10 of the children currently below the poverty line.

Column number: 128

Andrew Selous: I have no argument with the hon. Lady on that point. As I have already said, we are leaving clauses 2 to 5 intact. We are committed to those targets, but this is an important argument because our contention is that we will not really succeed in meeting the targets in clauses 2 to 5 unless the strategy in clause 8 is focused on the additional set of targets that we want to put into new clause 3, which would become clause 6 of the Bill, were it agreed to.

Let me pray in aid some of the other witnesses who came before us. At column 109, on 22 October, Mike Brewer of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Donald Hirsch from Loughborough university were asked whether to achieve the aims of the Bill one needs to address the longer-term causes of poverty in the early years, to which they both said yes. Mike Brewer said:

“I share the reservations...that all the targets are about family income.”

He went on to say:

“I wish that there were a broader range of indicators”.——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 104, Q203.]

My concern is that we could achieve the targets, but not turn people’s lives around in the way that would be necessary to break inter-generational cycles of poverty. Edna Speed told the Committee how her organisation, Save the Family, managed to do that, and said that

“86 per cent. of our families are turned round for ever.”——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 84, Q168.]

That is a pretty impressive statistic. Neil O’Brien, from Policy Exchange, spoke about the current set of targets driving public policy to

“relentlessly...downstream intervention to give people income, rather than...tackle the causes.”

He spoke of it being necessary to align

“your targets to your broader strategy”.——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 101, Q199]

That is the central point. Clause 8 will focus solely on meeting the targets in clauses 2 to 5.

Mr. Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con): I have two questions for my hon. Friend—or perhaps a comment and a question. One of the criticisms made of the target culture is the fact that the targets chosen, however worthy, distort the broader range of policies. That is particularly important in an area in which, as the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North said, there is such complexity involved, so would the addition of a greater number of targets perhaps lead to a more rounded policy approach? Does my hon. Friend have reservations—perhaps I am in a minority of one—about the fact that the setting of targets in statutory form as an essential aspect of ongoing policy is fundamentally incorrect and self-distorting?

Andrew Selous: In relation to my hon. Friend’s first point, my argument is that we will ultimately not be successful by 2020, or by any other date, in achieving the targets in clauses 2 to 5 without doing serious work on what leads families, often over many generations—five generations were mentioned by some of the witnesses—into poverty.

On the point about putting that on a legal basis, I understand the concern expressed by hon. Members. The Government have failed to meet their 2005 target,

Column number: 129

and they are likely to fail to reach their 2010 target by about a third. As my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire said on Second Reading, they are now reaching for legislation, having failed without legislation. There is a question as to what difference a Bill will make—that is a legitimate view. However, a Bill is being considered in Committee. We are all committed, across the House, to really dealing with, and eradicating, child poverty if we possibly can, and to driving it down as much as possible. To do that, we need to make sure that the strategy in the Bill does the job by focusing on what drives people into poverty in the first place.

The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and her Department used to publish that sort of data in the Government report “Opportunity for all”, until 2007. I am not aware that she has explained why the Department suddenly stopped publishing that information, as a number of witnesses, including, I think, Neil O’Brien from Policy Exchange, pointed out. The data that the Department used to publish focused on children in workless households, and looked at teenage pregnancy, the proportion of children in disadvantaged areas with a good level of development, the number of NEETs—people not in education, employment or training—the number of 16 to 18-year-olds in learning, obesity in children, and a number of other factors. Bizarrely, that publication was stopped. Some Members will perhaps be familiar with the statistics produced by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which cover more than child poverty—they go across the age range. The JRF report, “Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2008”, contains 56 indicators, and notes whether there have been improvements and whether the situation is steady or has got worse across a range of those indicators. It is an incredibly valuable document in terms of driving policy. Indeed, Save the Children applies a similar rubric.

10.45 am

Finally, the New Economics Foundation and Action for Children report, “Backing the Future: why investing in children is good for us all”, came out a month or two ago and I am struck by a couple of sentences in its summary. The document, which I would commend to all Members if they have not read it, talks about

“why it is essential to address the impact of the structural factors affecting the circumstances of children’s lives”.

It also mentions how

“the UK Government could fund a transition to a more preventative system, therefore turning aspiration into reality.”

The report points out:

“When compared with our European neighbours, the UK comes bottom of the pile on almost every preventable social problem—crime, mental ill health, family breakdown, drug use, or obesity.”

Furthermore, an incredibly striking point is that

“the UK has to spend a third more in addressing the consequences of its social problems than the next most troubled nation.”

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire, who is part of the shadow Treasury team, will have noted that the UK is forced to spend a third more than the next most troubled nation in Europe on some deep-seated social problems.

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Prepared 28 October 2009