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Andrew Selous: I agree with my hon. Friend. If memory serves me correctly, that point was made by Kevan Collins in our evidence session, when he called for more flexibility within the benefits system and for the system to be prepared to take risks sometimes over individuals, with benefit holidays and the ability to get back on benefits.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Helen Goodman): I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has costed the options that he is talking about.
Andrew Selous: I am not sure that we have talked about general options; we are talking about a general philosophical approach of providing more flexibility within the welfare system. I do not necessarily agree with the Minister that a flexible system is necessarily more expensive than a rigid system. There are costs inherent in a rigid system, if it keeps people out of the labour market, because the Minister’s Department has to go on paying benefits. It is a complicated area. I recognise what she is saying and she is right to make that point, but this is not by any means the end of the debate. It will be the subject of further study by her party and mine for many years to come. I shall move on because there are many amendments to speak to.
Amendment 58 deals with the well-being of children, which we have touched on throughout the Bill. This is specifically a child poverty Bill; it looks at the income levels available to families in which children live. It is not a Bill about children’s well-being specifically, but we would all agree that poverty and well-being are intimately linked. If nothing else, fostering children’s well-being is likely to be beneficial to the outcomes of those children when they in turn become parents. The National Children’s Bureau, among others, has said that adding a reference to well-being would ensure that the Government consider the breadth of services that can impact on the quality of a child’s life.
Amendment 2 covers three different areas, all of which I will speak to. The reference to families with disabilities covers a distinct group in which there is a particular concentration of child poverty, as every study on child poverty shows again and again. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, among others, has called for and will welcome amending the Bill to refer to disability. We referred to it in our earlier discussions on the disability living allowance. I commend the amendment to Ministers for their consideration. The Secretary of State will have to consider the issue specifically when she formulates her strategy.
I make the same point about ethnic minorities. I am conscious that we need to be careful of the language we use, but, for example, there are phenomenally high rates of child poverty in the Bangladeshi community in London, perhaps for long-standing cultural reasons or due to language or attitudes towards all family members going out to work. We must recognise that a general UK-wide strategy may leave certain communities untouched. Again, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has welcomed that focus.
I want to talk about proposed new subsection (5)(e) in amendment 2, which refers to “reducing family breakdown”. I hope we can debate this in as consensual a way as possible, and I long for the day when this area of family policy is more or less agreed across the House. I am always troubled that it is an area of contention, as it is one on which I seek consensus. I was genuinely pleased when I picked up “Ending child poverty: making it happen”, which was brought out earlier this year by the Department for Work and Pensions from the child poverty unit, which has done tremendous work on bringing the Bill forward. All three references to strengthening families pleased me.
Page 12 of the document says:
“Family breakdown and crisis can make searching for work very difficult and also increase the risk of dropping out of the labour market.”
That is absolutely right; I was pleased to see that. Page 15, which addresses supporting parents, talks about strengthening the capabilities of parents. That is just the right the language and something I would back completely. Page 16 sets out the famous building blocks to try to eradicate child poverty, with the diagram that has been produced at all sorts of conferences. I was again pleased to see family rightly mentioned as one of those eight building blocks. I have referred before to the impact assessment, paragraph 2.6 of which says:
“Family breakdown may have caused the family to fall into poverty.”
Those statement are all from Government documents, so I was surprised when I looked at clause 8(5), and noticed that all the building blocks were there and named expect one: family. Curiously, family seems to have slipped through the net, and I do not know why. I was disappointed because I had thought that what the Government had been saying and their direction of travel had been encouraging.
I was also slightly discouraged during the evidence sessions when the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said:
“The Government are not wholly convinced that family breakdown is a cause of poverty”.
That worried me, so I came back with:
“Is it not the case that if your parents separate you are twice as likely to grow up in poverty as a child?”
The Minister replied:
“The data that we have show that there is a small downward blip at the point of a family breakdown”.——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2009; c. 15-16, Q44-45.]
I said that we needed to look further into the data.
Mr. Stuart: I found that the most peculiar piece of evidence that we heard in all the Committee sittings was a Government Minister saying that family breakdown was not a major contributor to poverty. It might make one think that the couple’s penalty within the benefits system is almost deliberate, if the Government put such little regard on supporting and keeping families together, and do not regard them breaking apart as something major.
Andrew Selous: I hear what my hon. Friend says, although I take a slightly more charitable view. I do not think that it is deliberate; it is probably an oversight or an unintentional policy error. I completely and utterly accept that poverty drives families apart. There is a saying that when money goes out of the window, love goes out of the door—or vice versa. I wholly accept that, but I think that the relationship works the other way as well.
Let us look at some detailed figures. The hon. Member for Northavon is a great believer in dipping carefully into the households below average incomes series—no doubt he has the pack with him. I also have a copy from the Library.
I got the House of Commons Library to carry out some analysis of the figures. It sent me a note in July—that is the one to which I referred in Committee. The note splits children in low-income households—those below the 60 per cent. median income—into those whose parents are married, in a civil partnership, cohabiting, single, widowed, and separated or divorced. The figure for all children in poverty across the UK is 23 per cent. The likelihood of a child being in poverty if their parents are married, in a civil partnership or cohabiting is 18 per cent.—1.8 million out of 9.8 million children. In households headed by a parent who is single, widowed, separated or divorced, or whose civil partnership has been dissolved, the figure is 1.1 million out of 3 million children, or 36.6 per cent—slightly more than double the figure for other households. When I said that the figure was double, I was being cautious and had understated the figures.
Those are the Government’s own figures for households below average income—they are just the facts of the case. We can forget any political baggage on the left or the right of the issue—these are just the facts. It is staggering that we cannot get some political consensus on the issue on doing something to strengthen and support families and give them the best chance of keeping their children out of poverty.
Steve Webb (Northavon) (LD): With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I do not think that there is such a thing as “just a fact”—his facts were laden with inference, and that is where there is some difference between us. The point was made in the evidence session that many countries have comparable rates of lone parenthood to the UK, but that that does not manifest itself in child poverty. From the point of view of the Bill, is not the most important question why being a lone parent in Britain associates very strongly with poverty, when it does not have to in many other comparable countries?
Andrew Selous: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, and I would want to look further into the particular details that he mentions. However, as I look at the statistics across Europe, I see that this country is off the curve. We are right at the top of the table for countries in which there is a significant degree of separation, and we also have a very high level of child poverty. I believe that there is a correlation between the two. Of course, if we give more and more financial support to single parents, there will be less child poverty in certain areas. None the less, 1.8 million children in two-parent families are in poverty, while 1.1 million children in single-parent families—those where the parent is widowed, separated or divorced, or where the civil partnership has been dissolved—are in poverty.
The hon. Gentleman is clearly correct in the sense that if we give lots of state benefit to single parents, we can do something about the issue, and I do not think that anyone would dispute that. However, I am making the more general point that as part of their strategy—not the whole and perhaps not even the most significant part—the Government must be conscious of the need to do something to strengthen and support family life, the fragility of which leads far too many of our children into poverty.
Ms Buck: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree that any difference between the parties relates to a question of means, rather than a question of principle. However, given that the Conservative party is keen to introduce a premium in the tax system to support marriage, what calculations have been done on the amount that would act as an incentive to couples to marry and stay together?
Andrew Selous: I have not actually mentioned marriage so far, although I am happy that the hon. Lady has done so. I do not know what my party will do on that issue, and we have not announced that yet. However, we have announced plans to end the couple penalty as far as the working tax credit is concerned, and that would apply to married and cohabiting couples. There is a separate debate to be had on marriage, and I am more than happy to enter into one with the hon. Lady or anyone else on another occasion, but that was not the central thrust of my argument—I was just talking about strengthening families in any shape or form.
Mr. Stuart: Does my hon. Friend, like me, wonder whether any Labour Member will stand up and defend the couple penalty and say that this is a desirable state of affairs? Alternatively, will they welcome the fact that we would seek to get rid of it? The Minister is always quick to point out that there are costs to all these things, but surely we can all agree that we should seek to end the couple’s penalty.
The Chairman: Order. Interesting though that might be, it might be more productive if we tackled the Bill.
9.30 am
Andrew Selous: As always, Mr. Key, I shall follow your guidance in these matters. My hon. Friend’s comments are on the record for Labour Members to respond to as they wish later in the debate.
Finally, amendments 67 and 68 were tabled by the hon. Member for Northampton, North. She wants to include the provision of services for looked-after children and for those in the asylum and immigration system, which was the subject of earlier deliberations. There are distinct issues there, so I think that it is fair for her to raise that point.
Steve Webb: Good morning, Mr. Key. I have been musing this morning as to what sin you might have committed in a previous life to have to endure another of our sittings. It is nevertheless good to see you in the Chair.
Clause 8 has a slight feeling of a Christmas tree about it; we have all come along with our baubles. A bit of me almost wants to strip the tree down and perhaps even take out subsection (5), on which we are hanging those baubles. Either we have a strategy that is about child poverty and we let the Secretary of State get on with it, or we have a complete shopping list of everything that matters to do with the welfare of children—and in the spirit of the debate we have added a couple of our own. However, what we have is neither fish nor fowl—we have some things that matter to children but not others.
We have tabled amendment 30, which is about transport, and amendment 47 on child care. We note that the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North wanted to add a provision on child care in a different place in the Bill. We can have a high-tempered debate about where it should go, but we would be happy if amendment 50 were accepted. I shall explain why, if we are going to have a Christmas tree, we would like to hang the baubles of transport and child care on it, but I wonder whether the Ministers will reflect on whether picking some things and not others might create the wrong outcome.
It is like our discussion about targets when we started our consideration. Once we start saying that something matters because it is in legislation, is there not a risk that, when drawing up the strategy, we look at the things that are listed, but ignore disability, ethnicity, asylum-seeking children and all the other things that we would like to add? I hope that the Financial Secretary will give us a flavour of why some things and not others are included and reflect on whether specifying particular things makes sense. If we are going to do that, transport is clearly an important issue and it links to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness on rurality, because transport and rurality are closely linked.
Judy Mallaber (Amber Valley) (Lab): I understand the hon. Gentleman’s argument and I am having similar difficulty about what should and should not be included. Would he not agree, however, that there is a difference between what is included and some of the other items that are being suggested, which are subject areas and services, and a separate category that would not fit into the existing structure relating to individuals’ characteristics and groups, such as ethnicity? A clear distinction can be drawn between those two sectors. I think that it is right to concentrate on the services and subject areas rather than the groups, which would be a separate argument.
Steve Webb: That is a fair point. We are talking about different categories of things today. I am not absolutely convinced that all those on the list are of a kind. One might argue that some of them are slightly different sorts of things, but I take the general point. If that is the criterion for being on the list, transport services would be an obvious example. There are three obvious links between transport and child poverty: access to services, access to jobs and access to leisure.
The material deprivation standard is things like having a hobby and going swimming—that kind of stuff. If there is no bus and the child’s parents do not have a car, going swimming is going to be a bit tricky. Clearly, if we are to deliver on the targets, I cannot see why transport would not be on the list. Health matters, education matters, social services matters and transport matters, so why not include transport, which has a particular impact on poverty in rural areas?
One of the problems with the Government’s anti-poverty strategy—it is an inevitable problem—is that it is much easier to do things in towns and cities, as everyone is in the same place. There might be public transport, and things could be done cost-effectively, but that is hard if there is one deprived child living down a country lane with no bus. Transport is central.
 
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