Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380
- 387)
WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2009
SIR NICHOLAS
MACPHERSON AND
MS LOUISE
TULETT
Q380 Ms Keeble:
If you look at the numbers they have remained static. You cannot
give an answer for the progress on the most recent measures around
housing benefit which were supposed to lift children out of poverty;
you cannot comment on the measures that have been taken that would
tend to increase child poverty, for example rent allowances; you
do not know about the child care vouchers; and you have not told
us about any ways in which you are to tackle material deprivation.
If you look at the number of children in combined low income and
material deprivation it is 2.2 million and that number has remained
static since 2004-05. Why are you not dealing with those means
of measurement and delivering?
Sir Nicholas Macpherson: I regret
that I have not been able to answer your questions in as detailed
a way as you would like.
Q381 Ms Keeble:
They are not very detailed.
Sir Nicholas Macpherson: There
are still a good number of people in the Treasury working on this
agenda. Inevitably, from a personal perspective I have had less
time to devote to the details of this agenda as in previous years
because I have had to spend much of the year dealing with the
banks and the implications of the recession in terms of monetary
and fiscal policy. It does not mean that it is not important;
it is.
Q382 Ms Keeble:
The recession would tend to make it worse.
Sir Nicholas Macpherson: All I
can tell you is that in terms of my personal time I must prioritise;
otherwise, I would never get any sleep at all.
Q383 John McFall:
You will be aware that the Sub-Committee has focused on child
poverty for a number of years and tried to move it up the agenda.
I asked you a question about the shortfall. In the intervening
half-hour did you get any whispers from behind?
Sir Nicholas Macpherson: No.
Q384 John McFall:
Is your department mute?
Sir Nicholas Macpherson: It is
mute as of this minute. All I know is that in the past two years
we have made no progress in terms of the child poverty numbers.
As I believe I replied to Jim Cousins earlier, we have taken a
lot of measures designed to reduce child poverty. All of those
will come through in the data for 2008-09 and so on which are
yet to be published, but I am slightly suspicious, in part because
of experience over the past few years, that they may not fully
feed through to the statistics. I can remember saying in previous
years that measures would have such an effect and yet after quite
a good period in the early part of the decade we find it far more
difficult to make progress.
Q385 John McFall:
What I gather from page 79 is that you have taken about 2.7 million
children out of poverty, whether that is absolute low income households,
relative low income households or relative low income households
and material deprivation. Taking the first two categories in particular,
you have taken out 2.7 million but given it is a flagship policy
to halve the number of children in poverty by 2010-11 it is important
that we get a precise measure of the shortfall. We went through
this before when Mr Mudie was on the Committee; we chipped away
at this issue and obtained different figures. I understand the
stress that the Treasury has experienced over the past year, but
if it can provide us with a memo it will give us a handle on it.
Sir Nicholas Macpherson: I am
very happy to do that. I do not want you to go away from this
meeting thinking that we have either given up on child poverty
or do not take it seriously.[7]
Q386 John McFall:
In the past two years it has been difficult for what reason? Is
it due to increased unemployment among parents and different things?
Sir Nicholas Macpherson: I think
so. Some of this is due to the effect of globalisation. There
are huge forces at work in our society that tend to stretch the
income distribution. Relative measures of poverty are based on
median incomes. If you look at what has happened, despite the
minimum wage and other interventions at the lower end of the income
distribution wages do not appear to have been rising, certainly
not in real terms. You can put more government money into it,
but if the labour market is moving against you you just do not
make progress. I believe that is the fundamental challenge in
our economy.
Q387 Chairman:
We shall leave it there. You have promised us a great deal of
information. We must have it in good time before the minister
appears so we need it by 30 November, if that is possible. Can
you also include in it an update on the line of sight programme
about which we have not heard for a while?
Sir Nicholas Macpherson: Certainly.
Chairman: In the mean time, thank you
very much for your attendance.
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