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Lord Burnham: My Lords, I happen to have tabled the first Question for Monday 7th January, relating to Railtrack, which I am sure the Government are anxious to answer. What will happen to that Question?
Lord Carter: My Lords, I am afraid that it will not be taken on Monday 7th January as the House will not sit. Perhaps I may say to the House that I did point out to the usual channels that all four Questions on the first day back were from the Opposition, and the usual channels agreed that the day should be lost.
Child Poverty
3.21 p.m.
Lord Harrison rose to call attention to Government policy on child poverty; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, children are at the cutting edge of poverty. Whenever a family, a neighbourhood or a country falls into poverty, it is children who feel it most. It is children, voiceless and voteless, who suffer in silence and bewilderment. In a world in which we can transmit in a trice pictures round the world of malnourished, pot-bellied poverty-stricken children and watch them on our TV sets at home, we have failed to use that same cutting edge of technology to eradicate the poverty that debilitates and kills millions of children world-wide each year.
It is time to act. Altruism alone should propel us towards action to defeat child poverty. But if altruism is insufficient, our own self-interest, if not famine,
should provide the spur. I believe that the events of 11th September provide a clear link between poverty world-wide and the rootlessness and restlessness that poverty spawns and which evil men exploit. The love of money may be the root of all evil, but the lack of money runs a close second.Poverty begins at home. I have seen child poverty in Britain, even in some of our wealthiest cities. As a local councillor 20 years ago, I paid home visits to children being brought up in jobless households, housed in accommodation where condensation dripped off the walls of rooms where schoolchildren were expected to live, study and grow up. Poor housing led to fitful education and compromised health. Poverty can grind down even the best of us.
I have seen child poverty in Europe, both inside and outside the European Union. However, I am heartened by the economic progress of countries such as Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, and the benefits that such wealth has brought to the children of those countries. I hope that the applicant countries of eastern and central Europe will likewise, under the umbrella of the European Union, improve their economies—the key to tackling poverty—and thereby help their children to satisfy the hunger of both brain and belly. We do not say it often enough: the European Union can be, and is, a force for good.
In the light of that, it is salutary to learn, according to the Government's excellent publication Tackling Child Poverty, issued last week in conjunction with the Pre-Budget Report, that, on some measures at least, United Kingdom levels of child poverty are poorer than those of our partners in the rest of the European Union.
I have seen child poverty world-wide: the street children in the favelas of Rio, the estranged children in the refugee camps of Jordan; and in Indo-China, by the banks of the Mekong river, I have sat down and wept at our inability in a modern world to provide for all our children, not the least the limbless children of Cambodia and Laos.
But in the aftermath of the events of 11th September, I sense a renewed enthusiasm to tackle global problems, signalled by the Prime Minister's determination never again to neglect impoverished countries such as Afghanistan. The war on poverty must be waged with the same despatch as the war on terror.
In the political combination of Gordon Brown and Clare Short, is it not legitimate to hope for real progress in the fight against child poverty both at home and abroad? While I pay tribute to the sterling work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker of Wallasey, who can remember a Chancellor and a development Minister working so closely and efficiently together as the present incumbents do? We must not squander the conjunction of competence and conviction which is to be found in Short and Brown. Indeed, we must build on the fresh domestic, European and international consensus on child poverty that is emerging. I am proud that Britain is leading the charge.
At home, the Government have pledged to abolish child poverty in a generation and halve it in 10 years. Save the Children acknowledges that 1.2 million children in the United Kingdom will be lifted out of relative poverty because of the policies pursued by the Labour Government. Examples are the 26 per cent real terms increase in child benefit and the introduction of the child tax credit and the working families' tax credit.
Redistribution in favour of poorer families has been a feature of the Chancellor's many Budgets. But the stealth tax credits do not always get the same billing as the so-called stealth taxes. But still, one in three children in modern Britain is classed as poor—that is, living in a household with an income below half the national average. This compares unfavourably with the one in 10 children deemed poor when Labour left office in 1979—a sorry legacy of the Rip Van Winkle years of neglect, when others who were responsible nodded off on their childcare watch. One in six children in modern Britain live in workless households and, together with some 10,000 children in lone parent families, have slipped into the statistics of poverty.
I ask my noble friend the Minister: what more can the Government do to fulfil their laudable aim of eliminating child poverty? Can additional support for the severely poor—especially for children of lone parent families—be identified as a priority of the new Government? Can income support for families with children, especially those in larger families, be further substantially lifted? Can families with younger children be particularly helped? Will the integrated child credit, when it is introduced in 2003, be set at a level consistent with a healthy minimum income standard? More precisely, should not the child tax credit legislation be extended to cover all children up to the age of 18? Those children in non-advanced education and training must not be discriminated against.
Will the Government tackle some of the lacunae and anomalies associated with the housing benefits system, the position of children in care, disabled children and those families who currently fall outside the benefits system? These measures, alongside the outstanding achievements of the 1997-2001 Parliament, will put us on the path of eliminating child poverty—poverty which my own children have seen even in the schools of leafy Cheshire. My son tells me of a school lad whose family were too poor to buy him sports kit, so he turned up in pyjama bottoms instead, to the ridicule of his peers. My daughter notes how, on non-uniform Fridays, some poorer children used to stay away, loath to pay the 50p privilege penalty. Others turned up in school uniform, reluctant to show off their sad rags against others' glad rags. Too often, such outward signs of poverty went hand in hand with academic weakness.
To the ranks of those who are concerned with children's issues, I take this opportunity to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, whose maiden speeches we await with great interest.
Will the Government ensure that the development of the single European market, of which I am a passionate advocate, is fashioned in a way to benefit all the citizens of the European Union in the distribution of the wealth that it creates? The pitfalls of the free movement of goods, services and people—which means workers, their families and their children—should be anticipated. As Commissioner Mario Monti once reminded me, tomorrow's single market is being created for today's children, but only if we create it with children in mind.
Will the Government continue to support Clare Short in her drive to ensure that the overseas aid spent through the EU by the 15 member states is spent wisely and rationally? I hope that the Government can be represented at January's Brussels conference mounted by the splendid EURONET group, entitled "Developing a Coherent Approach to Child Poverty and Social Exclusion in Europe". Will the Government also remind the Commission to be careful of its language? When the Commission talks of "forgiving" debts in the developing world, it should be reminded that the poor have no reason to ask for forgiveness.
World-wide, one child in four is brought up in absolute poverty, with all the ills that attend such a poor start in life. As War on Want points out in its whole picture campaign, an evil such as child labour is a symptom, not a cause, of child poverty. That poverty must be addressed to eliminate the attendant ills. I am therefore exhilarated that in February this year, Ministers Brown and Short launched an international child poverty initiative, with the triple goals of halving absolute poverty, achieving universal primary education and reducing infant deaths by two-thirds by 2015.
Chancellor Brown's November speech to the Federal Reserve in New York took up the impetus of September 11th. He demanded that rich countries increase their development assistance budget by 50 billion dollars each year. That is achievable, but it needs real political will. We can match the will-o'-the-wisp aspiration, which seems to have been around all my lifetime, that the developed nations should set aside 0.7 per cent of their GDP for overseas development assistance. Come that day, we will have provided the world with a cutting edge to defeat poverty and help poverty's deepest victims—children—to welcome a brave new world and a brand new day of hope. I beg to move for Papers.
3.34 p.m.
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for giving us an opportunity this afternoon to debate this important and timely subject. As your Lordships are aware, the Chancellor's efforts to make further inroads into world poverty and to gather £50 billion internationally to attack it have been in the news this week. I look forward very much to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Adebowale, who has been good enough to open the doors of Centrepoint for me over the past three years. I am grateful to him for that.
I shall concentrate on poverty—not especially income poverty, but poverty as it applies to those people who do not have the means to procure the necessaries of life. I shall consider the stress that poverty puts on families and its consequential impact on children and their development. I emphasise that many poor families do an excellent job of rearing their children and many well balanced people come out of poverty.
Among the young people whom I meet at Centrepoint, I often notice a clear distinction between the asylum seekers and the other young people. One asylum seeker with whom I have played chess for several months was always impeccably turned out and took great care about his personal appearance. He was always courteous and thoughtful. When I occasionally beat him at chess, he would say how much he enjoyed playing with me and what a pleasure it was. He had clear ambitions for the future. He wished to have a family and to establish himself as a computer programmer—and all that despite living in an emergency hostel in difficult circumstances and not being able to sleep well at night.
I contrast him with another young man whom I met, who had grime beneath his fingernails every time I saw him. He had been taken into care at the age of eight and subsequently been involved in the criminal justice system before becoming homeless. He had difficulty forming relationships of any depth with others, although he could easily converse about subjects such as films. His ambition was to visit Thailand and to experiment with drugs.
Another young woman whom I knew would attack her wrists with a razor blade from time to time. She was successful in art and had a commission to produce artwork for a City company, but even so I would see her after an exhibition and find that she had recently cut her wrists again.
I remember another woman who was talking to a hostel worker about her trip to Ibiza and the delights of the drugs there and the opportunities to make love with people. At the same time, she would be touching the leg of this man whom she had not met before.
I stress that those people represent only part of the group that I come across. Another young man was at a hostel for the long-term homeless during the winter time and was expelled for breaking the rules. When I knew him he was taciturn and clearly had great difficulty relating to people. When he was expelled—for quite reasonable causes, as far as I can understand—he held a deep grievance against those who had expelled him. That grievance against authority, adults and institutions is quite common among young people who have not had an adequate start in life.
Those experiences make me wonder what is at the roots of such behaviour. I remind your Lordships about the Calecott family who, when I visited them, had been living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation for 12 months. The mother was on sticks and had an infection to her pelvis. The father spoke no English. They had three children, aged 11, five and one. There
were no cooking facilities, so they had to live on a take-away meal each day and snacks in between. The mother was unable to provide formula milk for her child because there were no cooking facilities. She was therefore unable to take medication for her ailment, because she did not want to pass on the drug to her child by breast feeding. There was nowhere for the children to play as the bed and breakfast was on a busy main road, and the courtyard at the back was open to the children for three or so hours only on Sundays.The conditions had immediate impacts on the children. The five-year-old was having nightmares, waking in the night and showing other symptoms of anxiety. The mother, clearly an anxious person, had bitten her fingernails to the quick. Many factors were interfering with the mother's ability to nurture her children. Those factors were caused by poverty; they were not of the mother's own making.
All the child psychotherapists and experts to whom I have spoken about child development emphasise the importance of a child's early attachment to its primary carer. The first two years of a child's life are absolutely critical in that process. Many of your Lordships will be aware of the work of Bowlby, in the 1960s, the more recent work of Rutter, and the continuing research into attachment. That work shows that some infants and young children are simply constitutionally stronger than others and can adjust to quite bad neglect and attachment difficulties. Although it is possible to form attachments in later life, which can do much to mitigate earlier deprivation, serious problems may remain.
Young people who have grown up in such conditions are often very impulsive, self-destructive and hostile to others. They may also foster a grievance because they never received the care that they so desperately needed. They may also show a lack of resilience so that the usual hurdles facing all adolescents—exams and problems with parents or in obtaining a job—are higher for them. They are also more likely to fall at those hurdles.
In the 1998 Office for National Statistics report entitled Psychiatric Morbidity Among Prisoners, the researcher found that 64 per cent of the 505 male prisoners chosen at random and clinically interviewed had personality disorders. That research demonstrates the very strong association between poor early parenting and personality disorders. I have tried to paint a picture illustrating the fact that children are put at greater risk for the rest of their lives if parents and families are kept in poverty and forced to face the consequent pressures.
I praise the Government for their prudence and consideration. They have maintained the public's confidence and are now beginning to invest in public services, including the National Health Service and education. They are also legislating for those in need, as demonstrated by their Homelessness Bill. They are attempting to tackle income poverty with tax credits, and to introduce earlier interventions such as Sure Start for children up to four.
I warmly welcome the Government's achievements on those issues. It is essential to provide structures that enable all families to thrive. In its recent report, Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2001, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reports:
- "For the first time"—
- "the number of indicators which improved over the latest year clearly exceeds the number which got worse."
One of my concerns about tax credits is that, although I recognise the value of work for families in poverty, many families are not in work and the children in those families are at greater risk. A child's early years are crucial. In those years, children need a parent nearby to make them the centre of attention. Do the Government recognise that need, and what are they doing to free parents as far as possible to provide that attention? I should be grateful if the Minister would answer those questions either in her reply or in writing.
3.45 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Harrison for initiating this debate on child poverty. As he pointed out in his powerful survey, the problem is both great and urgent in countries all around the world. He also made it clear that we shall only be storing problems for ourselves if we do not tackle the issue now.
I shall, in a fairly brief speech, concentrate on child poverty in the United Kingdom. At the conclusion of his speech, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked how we can best tackle child poverty given our urgent desire and commitment to do so. In his Budgets since 1997, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has introduced innovative policies to reshape the notion of redistribution. While we usually think of redistribution as a transfer from those in high-income deciles to those in lower ones, the Chancellor has specifically distinguished those with children from those without children. He has therefore indirectly made the Government's redistribution policy more needs-based.
Such redistribution has occurred in measures such as the working families' tax credit and the new child benefit, which have made considerable improvements in child poverty levels. Nevertheless, problems remain—despite the fact that we are the ninth richest country in the world and that, in the past five or six years, we have had very high employment levels. We therefore have to ask ourselves why, despite relatively good economic growth and the Government's commitment to tackle child poverty, the problem has proved so persistent.
There are two aspects to the problem. First, child poverty is essentially a by-product or adjunct to parental poverty, especially in lone-parent families which are usually headed by women. Moreover, women's ability to work depends very much on the age and number of their children. Although we have tried
to encourage single mothers to go to work, there is a clear conflict between that objective and the need to care for small children. We therefore have to address the issue of women's poverty, especially in the case of single women, and its consequences for children. We tend to think of dealing with child poverty in terms of provision for children, but perhaps we should think of it more in terms of provision for parents while their children are young.Secondly, many of those who have poor children are out of the "economically active" category. Consequently, those parents are not helped by provision made in the tax system. Regardless of how cleverly we devise tax incentives in measures such as the working families' tax credit, the core poverty of economically inactive families and their children will not be tackled. That in a sense again throws us back to thinking of other kinds of issues, especially how to introduce income entitlements for people who are not in the economically active category.
On previous occasions I have spoken about citizens' income or basic income. That is a distant ideal but when we think of income support or any other income entitlement, we ought to think creatively about allowing the payment of an extra dollar, as it were, for smaller children. I know that much is being done. I do not deny that we have in place a child benefit system, an income support system and various other measures. But somehow they are not working at the lowest end. The question I have, not for the Minister as such but for all of us, is the following. How do we in this day and age make it possible for people who cannot work for one reason or another—there are many reasons why they cannot work—to receive a temporary increase in income support or some entitlement which will at least protect children from suffering the long-term problems of growing up in poverty? We are talking about the education, health and housing of small children. The way we tackle that matter is a problem which still troubles us all.
In other contexts, for the elderly, for example, there is the minimum income guarantee and other such measures. For people in work there is income supplement through the tax system. If we could, for specific time periods for families with children, think of an extra temporary increase in income and devise a shadow basic income scheme for such families, that may be the way to tackle child poverty. I am sure that there is commitment on this question; what we lack are instruments. I hope that debates such as this will make us think about those instruments.
3.52 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Guildford: My Lords, I share, I am sure, the gratitude of the whole House to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for giving us the opportunity to debate this matter.
For a number of years I served on the team of a parish in Nottingham where Coates and Silburn did some important research which led to the publication of an epoch making book, Poverty: the Forgotten Englishmen. That book blew a hole in the "You have
never had it so good" generation's understanding of our country's life. The face of poverty in our children is especially offensive. However, as the debate bears witness, child poverty is alive and well in Britain, as well as in the wider world, as we get into the 21st century. The fact that Her Majesty's Government have made this a target of their policy both here and overseas is evidence that in the highest places of politics that fact is accepted.This country has one of the highest rates of child poverty in Europe. That must prompt a sense of shame about our performance given that we reckon ourselves to be on the leading edge of economic development in our time. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's invitation last week to a number of people to attend a conference to examine some of those issues is evidence of their importance. It was timely and welcome. The fact that the invitation was extended to the Archbishop and to leaders of the other faith communities is recognition of the important role that the Churches and faith communities play in our communities in tackling some of those questions.
Clergy and leaders of faith communities do not move into some of the stressed communities in our country; they live there. In living there, they seek to bring ministry to bear to families and to children through the schools and through the networks of the community. They seek to see and then to tackle some of the extraordinary experience of poverty about which we have heard in today's debate.
Government cannot achieve their aims, either internationally or in this country, on their own. They will need to harness the deepest and finest resources on the ground in our communities, rooted in the most profound of moral values and, if I dare say so, even of spiritual life if we are to succeed in this task. If I am right, the gurdwaras, the mosques, the pentecostal churches and the parish churches of our stressed communities will be key elements of the partnership. Together with government, we shall have to challenge the corporate sector to provide some resources for tackling the task.
What do children need? Clearly, they need secure, loving homes where they are safe and can grow up into adult life in a context of consistent loving relationships and values. If we are to say to parents, "Children are a trust who give you inescapable responsibilities", then we, as a caring community, must ensure that parents have the skills, the material resources and their place in society to enable them to meet that trust.
Family breakdown is a cause of emotional and material poverty among children. Unemployment is a cause of stress and material poverty among children. Some 80 per cent of child poverty has an association with unemployment. Bad and inadequate housing is a cause of stigma, embarrassment, ill health and deprivation to children. But how are we to see our children? Not, I suggest, in this season of the year with a kind of romantic slush that overwhelms them with kindness for a brief period of the year and then effectively abandons them for the rest—seen at Christmas, not heard for the rest of the year.
Children carry the full dignity and sacred worth of every single human being. They have a right to be treated as such by us all. Indeed, listening to the Starred Question on children today, a strong moral case can be made that we should treat children with the same respect and value with which we expect to treat one another as adults. This full humanity, bodily, social, material, emotional and spiritual, is to be provided for in meeting the needs of children today.
As many noble Lords will know, I chair the board of Christian Aid. We know of the tens of thousands of children in our world who are effectively slaves at work and of the millions—dare I say it?—who are threatened with growing up as orphans because of AIDS. I should be interested to hear from the Government something of the work they are doing to support communities deeply affected by AIDS. I refer to the multitudes of children who live in places—I have seen some of these places on visits to Africa in particular—where there is no schooling, or what schooling there is has no resources because the country concerned is in economic chaos or weighed down with unacceptable levels of debt.
But I also know that at this time of the year on the streets of our own cities children are being driven to prostitution. Larger numbers than we care to think live with physical and emotional abuse in their own homes, or, especially at the season of Christmas, will be in terror as they watch their own parents fight it out in domestic violence.
It is especially good to be present to hear the maiden speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale. They will have huge contributions to make on these matters.
We lock up children in secure units because we do not know what to do with them in terms of their violent behaviour. And we take children away from their homes because their parents are either violent to them or do not have the emotional resources to cope with parenting. In Britain at the end of 2001, at Christmas, these things will be happening in our own country.
In his Dimbleby lecture, Bill Clinton spoke of the war in Afghanistan costing over 1 billion dollars per month. He went on to make the telling point that the war against poverty costs much less and achieves much more. We are well served by the policies the Government are pursuing; and now we are at a moment of great opportunity with the leadership shown in these matters by the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for International Development. We must support and press our Government to achieve these aims so that our own house is put in order.
That is what we are meant to be doing in this season of Advent, if noble Lords will forgive a Christian theme. As we approach the season of Christmas, when we believe that the face of God meets us in the face of a vulnerable child, for God's sake, and for the sake of our children in and out of season, let us rid our nation and our world of poverty in our lifetime.
4.1 p.m.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I have three good reasons for thanking the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. The first is for the opportunity to make this speech. I thought that I should end this term having listened to much about terrorism—necessary but interminable—but never having had the opportunity to talk on the subject about which I care most: that is, children. Secondly, I thank the noble Lord for reminding us about children across the world. I shall talk mainly about children in this country. However, earlier this year I visited India and saw street children. I hope that in this country we never see a child in the state in which I saw some children there. Having said that, I have seen children in doorways; I have seen them carried on the shoulders of their mothers, begging in trains. When we look abroad, we should remind ourselves that much of that happens on our own doorsteps, shocking as that may be.
I think that a maiden speech is a time for noble Lords to learn something about the person speaking as well as the issue. I have a vivid memory of being a small girl in Sheffield, in my primary school, and of a classmate prodding me in the back, saying, "Valerie Howarth, your socks are all darned". We were not poor in comparison with the other people on the large Parson Cross housing estate where I was raised, but I have spent most of my life close to those who have experienced poverty at a significant level. Being poor does not predestine people to failure or make them violent, abusive, drug addicts or criminals. But grinding hardship, the struggle to keep out of debt, homelessness, inadequate housing and the constant fight against ever-increasing odds leading to mental illness and low physical care are the breeding ground for social ills.
I begin this way because many will say that social exclusion—the hygienic word for poverty—is no excuse for anti-social behaviour; and, indeed, it is not. But we know that there is a correlation between these issues and if by well thought out policies such as those on which the Government are at present engaged we could reduce violence, abuse and illness in our society, we should surely make every effort to do so.
The Government have many innovative programmes to tackle poverty. Increases in universal child benefit, the working families' tax credit and income support were outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Desai. They are complemented by new projects such as Sure Start which makes a real difference for young children, as I have seen in local communities, and Connexions which links personal advisers to young people to keep them in education. Both are essential—the latter in particular because education is the one sure way of getting out of the poverty trap.
Not all families manage their way around these benefit schemes. I have a friend—her mother was a client of mine in the past so social work is sometimes pretty consistent—a single mother who is attempting to take herself off benefit and into work and training. She has ended up in such a muddle that she now has
huge rent arrears. Some families find it very difficult to sort their way through the maze of benefits. But she is a good mother and I shall do all in my power to help her.As a social worker, a previous director of social services and Chief Executive of ChildLine, I have worked with dozens of families in difficulties and listened to hundreds of children. I have talked with men and women in prison and mental hospitals. Poverty was part of many of their stories. Poverty breeds violence. Through stress it brings depression, resentment and the attendant anti-social behaviour which we all abhor. Family breakdown, including serious violent outbursts, can often be the outcome of financial strain with disastrous consequences for children. Of course, poverty is not the only reason for violence and violence is far from being a feature in every low income family. But children talking to ChildLine about their experience of family conflict often link rows to lack of money. When I talk of rows, I am not talking about the polite argument that some may have over the dinner table. One child called and talked to me, having prised the hands of her father from the throat of her mother.
Violence is a factor in total family breakdown adding to deprivation in a child's life. Seventeen thousand children a year pass through the hectic and often emotionally fraught environment of women's refuges. Those refuges will provide a safe haven from violence but, at a stroke, a child will have education, friendships and extended kinships disrupted and sometimes lost forever.
Violence is also a key feature in the development of sex offenders, as I know as the Vice Chair of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. Recent studies have confirmed this connection; and while not all violent men are abusers nor from poor homes, many sex offenders have both those features in their history.
A poor income usually also means a poor diet; and here I declare an interest as a board member of the Food Standards Agency. The FSA is shortly to launch a major new low income diet and nutrition survey which will make a contribution to the Government's wider strategy on health issues. There is a particular concern for young people with evidence that eating patterns established in adolescence are likely to remain through adult life. Low income is a crucial factor in poor diet and a barrier to dietary change. A child's eating habits will play a major part in their physical development, general health, capacity to concentrate, and thus their successful passage through education. It is also vital for their emotional health that they do not experience their mother's failure to eat properly in order to ensure that they do; nor that she finds herself in prostitution in order to provide for them.
For many children coming from poor backgrounds, the breakdown of their family will result in them becoming looked-after children—children in care. Over 58,000 children are currently in local authority care. The Quality Protects programme has many measures intended to give this most vulnerable group of children and young people a decent start in life. However, they are not targeted specifically in the
present nutritional policy and it would be good to hear from the Minister how that will be taken forward in future plans.As noble Lords will know, in most circumstances it would be best for the child to stay with his or her family. Many new programmes have been mentioned earlier but not all families are able to use them. Voluntary organisations like NCH are doing much to help by providing family centres and community support groups. These can give a new sense of hope, self-worth and dignity to mothers who had almost given up, and consequently a lift to their children. But for some families the steady support of a local authority social worker will make all the difference. Whatever the public perception of social workers, day after day in communities throughout the country they are helping families with the most complex personal and social difficulties, while at the same time watching over the care, development and protection of their children. Sometimes they will make mistakes and occasionally, as in all professions, they will not be of the calibre that we would hope to see. At the moment there is a serious shortage of social workers in many local authorities. They undertake the work that many would rather not see. If poverty was a real issue, would our Benches here not be fuller this afternoon? It would be helpful to know about plans to attract more people into social work and to know how they can be better sustained and developed.
I began with the story of my darned socks. Why do I remember it so long after? Is it the slight, the shame? Not at all. When I reached home, indignant at the insult, I recounted the story to my mother. "Never mind, love", she said, "your classmate probably has holes in her socks. She might not have anyone who loves her enough to do all that darning".
The problems of poverty are complex. The solutions are difficult and need to be sustained over a long period of time to gain results, but the end aim is simple. These programmes need to be long-term sustained in order that every child has someone who loves her enough to ensure a successful move to the adult world; and, who knows, they might just end up in your Lordships' House.
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