 House of Commons |
Session 2008 - 09 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Child Poverty |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Chris
Stanton, Gosia McBride, Sarah Davies, Committee
Clerks † attended the
Committee Public Bill CommitteeThursday 29 October 2009(Morning) [Robert Key in the Chair]Child Poverty BillWritten evidence to be reported to the HouseCP 11
CPAG, Save the Children, Barnardo’s and
Gingerbread
Clause 8UK
strategies 9
am Andrew
Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con): I beg to move
amendment 1, in clause 8, page 4, line 21, at end
insert ‘and the promotion of
economic
enterprise’.
The
Chairman: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the
following: amendment 50, in clause 8, page 4, line 23, after
‘education’, insert
‘childcare’. To
strengthen the scope of building blocks to ensure that the provision of
childcare services which are delivered within a mixed market are
included in the measures taken, and to ensure that funding for and
delivery of childcare services are safeguarded despite wider economic
difficulties. Amendment
58, in
clause 8, page 4, line 23, after
‘services’,
insert ‘and improving the
well-being of
children’. Amendment
30, in
clause 8, page 4, line 24, after
‘housing,’, insert
‘transport,’. Amendment
2, in
clause 8, page 4, line 25, at
end insert— ‘(e) reducing
family breakdown (f) assisting
children in families with
disabilities (g) assisting
children from minority ethnic
backgrounds.’. Amendment
20, in
clause 8, page 4, line 25, at
end insert ‘, and (e) the criminal
justice
system.’. Amendment
47, in
clause 8, page 4, line 25, at
end add— ‘(e)
childcare’. Amendment
60, in
clause 8, page 4, line 25, at
end add— ‘(e) the
development of specific policies to tackle child poverty in rural
areas.’. Amendment
67, in
clause 8, page 4, line 25, at
end insert ‘, and (e) the provision
of services for looked after
children.’. Amendment
68, in
clause 8, page 4, line 25, at
end insert ‘, and (e) the provision
of services for children of asylum and
immigration.’.
Andrew
Selous: Good morning, Mr. Key. On behalf of the
Committee, I welcome you back to the Chair on the penultimate day of
our proceedings.
Clause 8 is
the meat of the Bill. In many ways, it is the most significant clause,
and the fact that a large number of amendments have been tabled to it
shows that there is a lot of interest in it among Committee members. I
shall go through the different issues raised by the first group of
amendments, and I hope that the Committee will bear with me because
that will take a little
time. Amendment
1, tabled by my hon. Friends and me, would
add “and
the promotion of economic
enterprise” to
the end of subsection (5)(a). When discussing eradicating poverty, it
is important philosophically to mention, albeit briefly, the creation
of wealth. I recognise that the state has an important role in
alleviating poverty, but it cannot perform it alone. It is the wealth
creators—the entrepreneurs and the business men and women
throughout the country—who create jobs and set up businesses,
and they will be at the heart of eradicating child poverty, which is
the solution we all want from the
Bill. Ms
Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab):
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the best ways of contributing
to tackling child poverty is to encourage enterprise to pay
above-poverty
wages?
Andrew
Selous: That is an interesting debate. I remember Robin
Cook criticising the predecessors of the tax credits introduced by the
Conservative Government to subsidise poverty pay. I think that those
were the words he used at the time. Of course, the policy of the
previous Conservative Government has been continued and taken further
by this Government, but the hon. Lady makes an absolutely fair point: a
balance must be struck between the contribution of the state and
businesses. A
significant feature of the evidence sessions at the start of our
proceedings was that when local authority leaders were pressed on what
it would take to eradicate child poverty they first mentioned getting
more jobs and businesses going. On 20 October, Paul Carter talked about
the need to bring more “wealth and prosperity” into his
area of Kent. Richard Kemp, speaking on behalf of Liverpool on 20
October
said, “The
thing that will still take more people out of poverty in my city is
more and better-quality
employment”. He
talked about the 4,500 jobs that were created in Liverpool last year,
but made the fair point that not all of them had gone to the group that
we are
discussing. Lastly,
but certainly not least, Colin Green, speaking from his experience of
Coventry said first, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the
Member for South-West Hertfordshire,
that “the
most important things in this area are those that Richard pointed to,
about creating a dynamic local economy.”
——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill
Committee, 20 October 2009; c. 62-63,
Q136-139.] That
is the perspective of the council leaders who will have an important
job on the ground in working with the Government to eradicate child
poverty in their
areas. There
are further interesting perspectives. Just as Tip O’Neill said
that all politics is local, I would say that poverty is very much a
peculiarly and distinctively local phenomenon in many parts of the
country. The Department
has produced some shocking figures on—to
introduce a bit of jargon early in the morning—the lower-layer
super-output areas. Those figures look at sub-ward levels of economic
inactivity. In the Falinge and Central area of Rochdale, 76 per cent.
of the working-age population claims out-of-work benefits, and in a
further 60 areas across the country, many of them close to the
constituencies of some members of the Committee, more than half of the
working-age population is not in work. I sometimes refer to those areas
as job deserts. We will have to address that distinctive problem to
make real progress towards reaching the targets by
2020.
Ms
Buck: The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely interesting
point. However, before we go too far down a path with those figures,
which might be slightly misleading, does he agree that one reason for
those intense concentrations of workless parents is the nature of
social housing distribution and allocations? The fact that there is
much less social housing now than there was 30 years ago means that by
definition one concentrates people with disadvantage in small
geographical areas, rather than the geographical areas in some way
explaining why people are in poverty? We need to look at people rather
than at areas, which appears to what the hon. Gentleman
implied.
Andrew
Selous: I think that the two issues are linked. The hon.
Lady makes a fair and sensible point. Housing does play a role, and
that is one reason why I have some sympathy with the Liberal Democrat
amendment 30 on transport. If there are large concentrations of people
with high worklessness in one area, and jobs are created on the other
side of town but there are no decent bus routes or it is incredibly
complicated to get there, that is where transport comes
in. Let
me point to a possible solution to the issue that the hon. Lady rightly
highlighted. In the Marsh Farm estate in Luton, close to my
constituency, there was just such a set of circumstances. The estate
has high levels of worklessness and child poverty, and it was
discovered that the people living there spent just under £2
million a year on a range of takeaway foods, all from businesses
outside the estate. There was no garage on the estate either, and
people had to go some way—to St. Albans, for example—to
get their cars serviced. Partly through, I think, some money from the
new deal for communities programme, a fast food business and a garage
were set up on the estate. I understand that those businesses are now
thriving and sustainable, and not in receipt of ongoing taxpayer
support. That is a good example of the promotion of economic enterprise
within a job desert. Transport could, or would have to, be the solution
in some cases, but not everyone can travel long distances to work, so
it is important to have a supply of jobs in areas with high
concentrations of
worklessness. Ms
Sally Keeble (Northampton, North) (Lab): I completely
agree with the hon. Gentleman about the need for small-scale
statistics, and about the importance of initiatives such as the new
deal for communities and estate-based work. I would like some
assurances that not only the hon. Gentleman but the rest of his party
are signed up to the focus on local poverty indicators. Those of us who
were tackling unemployment and poverty in inner London in the 1990s
found that the then Conservative Government would look only at the
macro-statistics and not at the small-scale area
statistics.
That was one of the reasons we could never really
crack some of the problems. Will the hon. Gentleman assure us that
everyone on his Front Bench has changed their mind and is now aligned
with what he
said?
Andrew
Selous: As I read the political tea leaves, localism has
had a long overdue renaissance in all the political parties, not least
in the Conservative party—perhaps even principally in the
Conservative party. That is absolutely right. Local authorities, with
the total place concept that is being developed in local government,
are getting much more switched on to such an approach. I am happy to be
on the record as saying that all poverty is local. The hon. Lady makes
a fair point: we shall need a balance of national and local solutions
to deal with the important
issues. Julie
Morgan (Cardiff, North) (Lab): I strongly support the idea
of localism and looking at things in small local areas, but it is
important to link that with wider economic strategies. I think in
particular of south Wales, where areas are blighted by worklessness, in
a large degree due to the end of the mining industry—a
catastrophe that we are still trying to get
over.
Andrew
Selous: The hon. Lady is right. There are many such areas
of the country. My own area, for instance, used to make trucks and had
a big motor component industry, but all that is gone now. My area, like
hers, is having to think how to earn its living in a new and changing
world. That is always part and parcel of economic life. However, the
hon. Lady makes a fair point and I am sure that such issues are rightly
occupying the minds of her local authority leaders and of the Welsh
Assembly. Amendment
50 mentions child care—to which the hon. Member for Regent's
Park and Kensington, North will no doubt refer shortly. She is right to
try to put the issue in the Bill. The whole area of flexible working
needs to go in alongside that—the National Children’s
Bureau was keen to see it in the Bill. The NCB has drawn attention to
the fact that we are clearly not going to get many
families—single parent families in particular—into the
labour market without making absolutely sure that we have adequate
child
care. Mr.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con): We are
debating an issue on which there has been a change of focus in
Conservative policy. Flexible working is another such
issue—perhaps in the past it was seen as imposing too much of a
requirement on companies, and that to allow flexibility in working
would be against business interests. On the contrary, it has opened up
the work force and allowed more people to access work and has been a
positive measure that the Government have taken forward and that the
next Conservative Government will be able to build
on.
Andrew
Selous: I am grateful, as always, to my hon. Friend for
putting that on the record. I have always thought it slightly bizarre
that, as an employee, one is given such an all or nothing option: to
sell either all of one’s time to an employer or none of it. We
need to get away from that general concept, because that is not how
many people’s lives operate. We are all agreed, across the
Committee, that work is the best way of getting people—including
children—out of poverty. We have to do further thinking on that
area.
Mr.
Stuart: May I pay tribute to the Government for some other
progress they have made? The use of tax credits has made
work—typically for around 16 hours a week—easier, for
lone parents in particular. However, there are disincentives to work
more hours than that and for those for whom 10 hours might be more
appropriate than 16. We have a rather fixed system that dictates how
millions of people live. Does my hon. Friend think that progress can be
made to create a smoother and more graduated system to ensure that
people are able to work the hours that are most appropriate to them and
best suit their circumstances, including child
care? 9.15
am
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