Child Poverty Bill

Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2009.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

I have a few preliminary announcements to make. Hon. Members may remove their jackets during Committee sittings. Will all members of the Committee ensure that mobile phones, pagers and so on are turned off or switched to silent mode during sittings? Copies of the money resolution in connection with the Bill are available in the room. I remind members of the Committee that adequate notice should be given of amendments. As a general rule, I and my fellow Chair do not intend to call starred amendments, including any that might be reached during an afternoon sitting of the Committee.

The Committee will first be asked to consider the programme motion, on which debate is limited to half an hour. We will then proceed to a motion to report written evidence and a motion to permit the Committee to deliberate in private in advance of oral evidence sessions, both of which I hope we can take formally. Assuming that the second motion is agreed, the Committee will then move into private session. Once it has deliberated, witnesses and members of the public will be invited back into the room and our oral evidence session will begin.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

On a point of order, Mr. Caton. Two members of the Committee do not have seats, and I do not think that that is satisfactory.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

There are seats available in another part of the room. I apologise to hon. Members. We would usually be sitting in the Boothroyd Room, but that has been taken over by the Speaker’s Conference.

As I was saying, if the Committee agrees to the programme motion, it will hear oral evidence this morning and this afternoon, and on Thursday morning and afternoon. Next week, we shall move to the Committee corridor and revert to the traditional clause by clause scrutiny of the Bill. I call the Minister to move the programme motion.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I beg to move,

That—

(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday 20 October) meet—

(a) at 4.00 pm on Tuesday 20 October;

(b) at 9.00 am and 1.00 pm on Thursday 22 October;

(c) at 10.30 am and 4.00 pm on Tuesday 27 October;

(d) at 9.00 am and 1.00 pm on Thursday 29 October;

(e) at 10.30 am and 4.00 pm on Tuesday 3 November;

(2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:

TABLE

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

We look forward to serving under your chairmanship, Mr. Caton. We also look forward to hearing evidence from Ministers and outside experts. We are satisfied with the programme motion and it has our support.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

Copies of the memorandums that the Committee receives will be made available in the room.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

We shall now hear evidence from the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Children, Schools and Families and Her Majesty’s Treasury. I understand that Dawn Primarolo is delayed. Although she is on her way, we have to proceed.

Welcome to this morning’s sitting. Will the two witnesses that we have so far introduce themselves to the Committee?

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

Thank you. Before I call the first Member to ask a question, I remind the Committee that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

According to the “Oxford English Dictionary”, in modern English “eradicate” means to remove or destroy completely. Do you accept that describing the targets in the Bill as relating to the “eradication” of child poverty represents an inappropriate use of the word? Would the term “substantial reduction” be more appropriate?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

So are the Government announcing today that they are rejecting relative poverty as the fundamental measure of poverty?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The Government set out that they were going to seek to put Britain among the best countries in Europe in terms of child poverty. However, while other countries in Europe have fewer than 5 per cent. in relative poverty today, the Government are defining fewer than 10 per cent. as “eradication”. Surely that is an insult to the children who will continue to suffer relative poverty, even if the measures are successful.

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

A past criticism of child poverty progress has been that while some low-hanging fruit has been dealt with, the problem of severe and persistent poverty has not been tackled as rigorously as we would have liked. In the Bill, tackling persistent poverty will be dealt with retrospectively through the new Understanding Society survey. Is there not a danger that that will effectively postpone rigorous action on dealing with severe and persistent poverty? How will that be overcome?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

Do you accept that groups concerned with poverty would probably say that a ministerial hope will not be enough to reassure them that measuring severe and persistent poverty will be central to the Government’s objectives? Can we not be firmer?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

This is my last question. All the evidence indicates that it is primarily, though not exclusively, black and minority ethnic populations who are most at risk of severe and persistent poverty. Does the Bill’s impact assessment address that, and how do you see the correlation between ethnicity and poverty being addressed?

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

Before we come to the next question, we can welcome our third witness to the session. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Jamie Reed (Labour, Copeland)

On the issue of measurement, while no one doubts the intentions of the Bill, there are issues to be resolved. We have talked about some of the most severely impoverished groups of children in the country, who require the provisions of the Bill to be applied to them. There is a difficulty with asylum-seeking, Gypsy and Roma children, for whom there are no targets in the Bill, are there not? How are we going to address those people?

Jamie Reed (Labour, Copeland)

My concern is that although we can measure the effect of the Bill, it will be difficult to measure the needs comprehensively before we implement the Bill. I am still worried that some children might slip below the radar—children of families that do not claim income tax credit, the family entitlements that they are allowed or free school meals—or not appear on our radar at all. How will the targets in the Bill address their needs?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

One other group in society suffers more than its fair share of poverty: families in which disability is present. A disability within a family clearly adds a significant element of cost to that family. I do not think that anyone would dispute that. The Government count disability living allowance as income for such a family, but I think that we recognise that that is offset by the costs of dealing with the disability. Do the Government recognise that as an issue? Do the Ministers before us think that that is fair and right, and do they propose to do anything about it? With housing costs, we look at income both before and after the costs; is there not the case for doing the same with the costs of disability?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Okay, but there are no plans to stop counting DLA as income available to the family, in a generally understood sense.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

But it has costs attached, which you would accept are specific.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

But you do it differently for housing, don’t you?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I can explain that parallel very clearly. I think that most people accept that what a family has to live on, for food, heating and so on, is what they have available after they have paid their rent. That is why the Government have an “after and before housing costs” way of looking at the issue. Is it not very similar with disability in those families that have clear, defined weekly costs relating to their disability?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

To inform our assessment of how much the issue matters, is the Minister willing to ask her Department’s statisticians simply to run the stats through once minus DLA, so that we have a sense of how much the inclusion of DLA, which is income regarding which no costs are taken account of, affects the figures? I used to construct those figures myself, and it is simply a matter of excluding one income value from the totals and turning the handle. Is she willing to do that, to inform the Committee’s discussions?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

It is.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

May I explore what would constitute a breach of the duty on the Secretary of State under clause 1? If the Bill had been in place since 1997—enshrining the 2004-05 and the 2010 targets, as the 2020 target is enshrined in the Bill—what would the Government have done differently?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

May I give one example? The Institute of Fiscal Studies, in its report of February this year—produced in conjunction with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation—said that in order to meet the 2010 target, an additional £4.2 billion in tax credits and benefits would need to be spent. Had the Bill been in place, as I described a moment ago, would the Government, in order to comply with the Bill, have had to increase benefits and tax credits along those lines?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

But the Government have had strategies in place to meet their child poverty targets over the past few years. The Bill would now enshrine them in legislation, but the Government have had strategies. Yet we get to 2009 and it is pretty clear that the 2010 target is not going to be met. That has been clear at least since 2006. What would the Government have done since, say, 2006, when the IFS said that an additional £4.3 billion needed to be spent on tax credits and benefits, given that they had a hard and fast obligation to meet the target?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

So it would it be fair to say that the Bill imposes a tougher regime, and gives a higher priority to child poverty, for future Governments than has been in place for the current Government over the past 10 years.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

We all know that the public finances are going to be in a more demanding position over the next few years, but is that an obligation that the Bill imposes on future Governments?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

We will come to clause 15 in a moment. We are looking forward to a greater emphasis on child poverty from now on; that appears to be what you are saying. A pre-Budget report is coming up, presumably next month. The Government could start trying to comply with the 2010 target then by introducing measures to increase tax credits and so on. I have a suspicion that you are not going to do that to the extent of meeting your 2010 target. Why not?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

May I ask one more quick question on this subject? You quote the IFS and you also state that you have had the difficulties of the recession. The implication is that that has made things harder. The child poverty measure is a relative measure and, by and large, low-income families who are on benefits tend to be less affected by the recession than those who are working and those at the median level. The IFS has said that its forecasts for child poverty in 2010 would be slightly lower if the economy were to perform worse than the Treasury assumed. It has been clear for some years—years predating the recession—that you were not going to meet the 2010 targets. So is not the claim that it is due to the recession complete nonsense?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I am just trying to think through this issue of the value added of the Bill. I think that we would all agree that any enhanced effort to tackle child poverty is a good thing, that progress is a good thing and so forth, but we are not really talking about that. We are talking about eradication and a binding 2020 target. If, in a very benign economic environment, we miss the five-year target and the 10-year target—that, as has been said, is the low-hanging fruit—it does not take a genius to say that the next five years are going to be very tough financially. We are not going to achieve the 2020 target without some very dramatic change of policy and emphasis. That would be the central assumption of an independent observer. The focus on the get-out clauses then starts to become important, as does the focus on enforcement, which is the flip side of the Bill. I have a couple of questions about enforcement.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

No, I was not suggesting that we give up, but we need to know what the world would be like if it looks as if we are going to miss those targets. The first question is about how one enforces that duty. Will the Minister tell us what he envisages might happen? Suppose we get to 2017-18 and we are miles away from the target. Presumably, we will not know the 2020 numbers until 2022—I am not quite sure how that works. Who brings forward the judicial review? Who has to have the money to enforce the duty? If the measures are not working, who is going to use the stick? What is the value-added of this measure?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

But they would have to find the money to do that.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

What about the defence that one might offer? We will come on to clause 15 more substantively in a moment, but judging by the Bill, the child poverty commission might say, “We recommend this, but after having regard to the fiscal circumstances, we are not sure that we can actually find £4 billion”, or whatever the number is by the end. The Secretary of State, having regard to the fiscal position might say, “We’d love to tackle child poverty but we haven’t got the money.” The judicial review then comes along, and the Minister stands up and says, “We would have loved to have done it, but we didn’t have the cash, and the Bill allows us to not achieve it.”

Given that it will be possible to say such things in 15 years’ time, and given that it will probably be impossible to achieve those goals if we cannot do it when the times are right—we have missed the five-year and the 10-year targets—are we not building up a whole set of excuses for 10 years’ time?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

But the strategy is.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

What if the immovable object hits the irresistible force? What if meeting the target requires something fiscally, but the advice is that we cannot do it fiscally? What gives?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I shall follow on similar lines. I am interested in your point that the court could require the Government to make fairly substantial spending commitments. For example, it could presumably require the Government to increase child tax credits, which is perhaps unlikely, but do you envisage that as a possibility under the Bill? Is there any reason why a court could not do that?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I suspect that you are right that the court would send it back to the Government and ask them to think again and come up with more proposals. However, if the proposals were inadequate to meet the requirement—the likes of the IFS and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation tend to state that the only way that the Government can meet a target at a particular point is by increasing tax credits—it is presumably possible that that may happen.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

Briefly returning to my earlier counter-factual point: if there was currently an Act enshrining the 2010 target and the Government did not intend to meet that target through an increase in child tax credits, it would presumably be possible for a child poverty lobby to take the Government to judicial review with a view to requiring an increase in expenditure in that area.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

In the way that the Government have not planned in the past 10 years?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

May I return to the issue of the irresistible force and the immovable object? In addition to clause 15, the Government also intend to introduce a fiscal responsibility Bill making it legally binding to reduce the deficit. Who knows, maybe you and I will debate that issue sooner rather than later, Minister. If reducing the deficit is going to be legally binding and enforceable in the courts, there could be two legally binding obligations, one of which is under the Child Poverty Bill, as you have described it, requiring a considerable increase in public spending, and the other requiring a significant reduction in public spending. How would those two judiciable legal requirements work?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

But as you have said, it is possible for the court to state, “The strategy is not working and, regardless of the fiscal strategy, the target is non-negotiable and is not qualified. This is what you need to do to meet the target: spend more money.” At the same time, however, there could be another Bill in relation to which someone could take the Government to judicial review, and the court could state, “Don’t spend more money.”

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

But again, if we look at 2010—I am not sure I would necessarily describe it as a train crash—the Government are not meeting their objectives. They could do so by increasing expenditure on child tax credits. As you, Minister, rightly said, you are constrained by the state of the public finances. Notwithstanding your best efforts, and those of the Government over the last 10 years, we are where we are. If we are in a similar position in 2019 as we are now, what happens when the court has two Bills it is trying to enforce, one requiring additional expenditure and another potentially requiring less?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I have one final question. Is it not the case, regardless of whatever clause 15 states, that the duty under clause 1 would be subject to a later Bill that would impose a duty of fiscal responsibility on the Government—that a subsequent Bill would trump an earlier one?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

Is there an intention for there to be a carve-out from the fiscal responsibility Bill for the obligations under the Child Poverty Bill?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I think the last question goes to the heart of the matter. Minister, do you accept that it is the Government’s job to mediate between different interests and priorities of any time?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Yet, you are taking some priorities and setting them in a statutory framework. Let us take at face value your undertakings today that a difference will be made. It will be different from when the Government promised solemnly in Parliament that they were going to halve child poverty by 2010, which they have not, and somehow putting it in legislation would not change that. But let us assume that that is true. Going forward with ever-changing priorities and obligations, you are setting up an immovable need to tackle child poverty. Is that not fundamentally wrong if you have not gone through a set of priorities and are able to show how you will not end up with savage cuts to, for instance, support for the elderly?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I put to you the reasons for introducing the legislation. I know there is a genuine desire in the Government and across Parliament to eradicate child poverty; whether the Bill does it is a different matter. There are also two other, less creditable, drivers. The first is that by bringing the legislation forward, the Government create a smokescreen for their failure to deliver on their 2010 target, which was a solemn and supposedly binding one. The second is an attempt, as almost everything seems to be under this Government, to create dividing lines with the Opposition, who do not wish to be put into a position—I can say as a Back Bencher—where they appear to be less interested in eradicating child poverty than the Government.

At its heart, the legislation is fundamentally flawed for precisely the reasons that my Front-Bench colleague Mr. Gauke has just laid out. It is grossly unfair to create an expectation among those concerned with child poverty that it will be eradicated when it will not. It is also grossly unfair on other interests, be it the elderly, the disabled or any other vulnerable group, who will be disadvantaged if the Bill has the force that you are claiming for it.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

May I push you, though, on the other groups, because circumstances change. There could be a massive deterioration in the British economy, we could find ourselves in another war—who knows what might happen. The truth is that because of this legislation the interest of child poverty eradication will be put ahead of priorities that have not managed—for political purposes which I certainly ascribe to the Government in bringing this forward—to get themselves the same legislative support. That means that any Government will find themselves failing to make the proper balance—their fundamental duty—between different interests, because they will be guided by this legislation to favour child poverty eradication against the interests of any other vulnerable group.

Jamie Reed (Labour, Copeland)

It is of course unquestionably right, morally, that the Bill should bind future Governments to the eradication of child poverty. There can be absolutely no doubt about that whatever. With the Minister’s experience in other Departments, is it not a common occurrence for Government objectives to be subjected to judicial review? Green groups take on our energy policy time and again. This is just part and parcel of ordinary government, is it not?

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

UK child poverty strategies deal with very wide aspects of poverty. Some of those are not included in the Bill, such as crime, family breakdown and disability. Why is that?

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

The child poverty commission will be responsible for advising Government on meeting the income and material deprivation targets and on the aspects of the Bill covered in the strategy. How broad will the commission’s remit be if it feels that other factors not mentioned in the Bill are critical to meeting those targets? Will it have a broad remit to advise Government as it sees fit across the board?

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

Because, obviously, in the Bill we are talking about a broad range of issues in the strategy that could affect child poverty, which is reflected in having three Departments represented here. Will one Department have overall responsibility for making sure that those targets are met? Alternatively, how will that responsibility be shared across Departments?

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

This is probably an impossible question, but if targets are missed, will there be any way of assessing how much impact which of the various factors involved had in terms of us meeting or not meeting the target? How will that assessment be carried out, to guide future policy decisions?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Following on immediately from that, Minister, is it not the case that if your parents separate you are twice as likely to grow up in poverty as a child?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Okay. Perhaps we shall look further into the data and develop that issue later in the Bill. I am concerned that you seem to be rowing back from what your own regulatory impact assessment on the Bill says:

“family breakdown may have caused the family to fall into poverty.”

That is something that you quibble at, but it is in your own impact assessment.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

No. My first question was on the data that I have seen, which say that if you live in a family situation in which your parents have separated—classically known as a single or lone-parent family—you are twice as likely to be living in poverty as a child. We will, perhaps, go back to the data and come back to that issue. My second point was that in your answer to the hon. Member for Amber Valley you seemed to be rowing back from what is in the impact assessment:

“family breakdown may have caused the family to fall into poverty.”

I was delighted to see that in an official Government document. Most people would say that it is common sense. While I wholly accept that poverty causes families to fall apart—I am absolutely with the Minister on that—I think that it is a two-way relationship. Your impact assessment says that. I hope that you are not rowing back from it; that was what you seemed to be implying in your answer to the question put by the hon. Member for Amber Valley.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Thank you for that.

May I ask the Treasury Minister why he believes that it has proved so much harder to reduce child poverty than the Government thought in 1999? I do not think that anyone doubts the Government’s commitment or effort; they announced a plan to eradicate child poverty by 2020 in 1999. The target was to reduce it by a quarter by 2005. We had the good times up to 2005 and will have more difficult times up to 2010. Why has it proved harder to reduce child poverty than the Government thought? We need to understand that if we are going to do better over the next decade.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

No, I will stop you there Minister. I accept that, according to the Government’s targets, there has been progress; I am not disputing that. However, to reach the 2020 target the Government themselves thought that they had to reduce child poverty by a quarter by 2005 and by half by 2010. It is generally accepted by people who study this in great detail, outside the House and across the country, that it has proved more difficult than the Government thought would be the case. If we are going to do better in the next decade, the Bill needs to focus on why we have not done as well as the Government hoped—why they set the targets for 2005 and 2010. We have had the list of achievements, which are not disputed, but why has it proved harder than was thought in 1999?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

May I stop you there? In the good times, up to 2005, we did not meet the first target to reduce child poverty by a quarter. That was before the recession, in fairly benign economic circumstances, so what went wrong then?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

You mentioned the rest of the world. Has anywhere else legislated to reduce poverty and, if so, has that been effective?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Clause 8 on the UK strategies is a central part of the Bill, and it is what Ministers will concern themselves with as soon as the Bill becomes law. I am sure that there are already draft UK strategies. Notwithstanding the progress that has been made, do Ministers accept that if we are to do better over the next decade—the Financial Secretary was good enough to admit that we do need to—we need to have a greater understanding of and to tackle the causes of child poverty in families? Is that a fair understanding of Government thinking on that point?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I accept that. My earlier questioning did not imply that I was focusing uniquely on the family. Education and worklessness have been mentioned, and we have touched on the family. I want to ask about addiction, debt and the benefit traps that mean that many people up and down the country make a rational calculation to stay on a very small amount of benefit that they view as safe and secure. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury may remember that those issues were raised by Jobcentre Plus staff at the child poverty conference that he and I attended in Manchester a couple of weeks ago. The issue is important, because if people are going to progress there needs to be common ground on what is holding them back and on the causes that are keeping people in child poverty.

Addiction has not been mentioned, and I put it to the Ministers that when there is serious drug addiction in a family, no matter how much you increase the tax credit, it will probably not do a lot for the children. Debt and its potential impact have not been mentioned either. There are severe and specific issues aside from low income. A number of the causes universally recognised by the centre-right and centre-left of British politics are not in clause 8, and they need to be addressed if we are going to do better over the next decade. I have not heard a list, but I have a list of six: educational underachievement, worklessness, addiction, debt, family separation and benefit traps. We have heard about a couple of causes from the Ministers, but I want more on this issue.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

We will come back to clause 8 in a moment, but the most recent exchanges have stimulated three members of the Committee to ask further questions.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I shall speak very quickly about your first point, Minister, after which I shall ask my further question. You mentioned marginal deduction rates of above 90 per cent. and 70 per cent. Do you know the numbers for a rate of above 60 per cent.?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

Until 2007, the Department for Work and Pensions published an annual “Opportunity for all” report that listed a range of indicators of progress or otherwise in dealing with factors such as living in a jobless household, teenage pregnancy, low educational attainment and erratic school attendance, school leavers not in education, employment or training, living in substandard housing or temporary accommodation, infant mortality rates, teenage smoking and obesity. Those are all similar to what we were talking about when we discussed causation, and to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire. Why did the DWP stop publishing those reports? Why not include some of them under the Bill as points to be picked up as part of the strategy?

Jamie Reed (Labour, Copeland)

If we were to look at the map of child poverty in the United Kingdom, we would see direct correlations between areas that suffered aggressive de-industrialisation during the 1980s and 1990s and pockets of severe child poverty—the most severe child poverty that we see today. There would be a lot of surprises, particularly with regard to rural areas.

I shall move on from one of the important points made by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire about the barriers that are in the way. It is hard to address, from a technocratic point of view, some of the real cultural problems, not only with people who are in the benefits trap and in long-term unemployment, but with the significant numbers of people who, by contrast, do not come forward to claim what they are entitled to claim, and who, for whatever reason, will not enter the system and are falling outside the scope of the programmes that we are introducing. We do not seem to be addressing that real cultural issue when it comes to beating child poverty. How will we address it?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

That leads into what I was going to say, although I hate to disagree with a colleague. Important though the impact of de-industrialisation on employment was in many parts of the country, the Minister knows that the highest concentration of poverty is in London, despite the fact that overall, and notwithstanding the present situation, it is one of the healthiest labour markets in Europe. That tells us something important. It tells us that there is an issue about better-off calculations and marginal rates of deduction. It is good to hear from the Minister that a proportion of that has fallen significantly, but I think it is still very much in place.

The bigger picture, and something that has been entirely missing from what we have talked about this morning, concerns the role of employers and the world outside the state in meeting the poverty target. Is it not true that half of all children in poverty are living in families where at least one person is in work? Is it not the case that one of the most important ways we can achieve the poverty target is to deal with the problem of low pay? Some of that is to do with work incentives and tapers and so forth, but a lot of it is to do with challenging employers on the issue of low pay. We have a dilemma. Tax credits are important and valuable, but in a way they subsidise bad employment practice and low pay. Should that not be at the heart of what the Government are trying to achieve?

John Barrett (Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West)

I should like to return to clause 8 and getting the strategy right. I listened to what the Minister said about the preparation, and witnesses have expanded on the work that has gone into that. Clause 8 details the review of the strategy, making progress and so on. One thing it does not have is a duty to implement the strategy like that in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Does that give you a get-out clause, because it is just not there, or will you simply be left with a strategy that does not have to be implemented?

John Barrett (Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West)

But you understand the fears that you can have continually moving targets and continually revising strategies without the problem being dealt with at the end of the day?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I want to ask about housing. Given that the Every Child Matters report identified housing and homelessness as being key factors behind the vulnerability of children, and as being linked to unemployment and poverty, why has a higher profile not been given to such issues in the Bill?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

That is helpful and it would be useful to have a note on that. If that standard has to be achieved through the Bill, why are housing authorities in two-tier local government areas not included as partner authorities under clause 18(b)? They are specifically excluded. My housing authority in Northampton, which I must say does appalling things to families with children, is specifically excluded as a partner authority.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

No, not housing associations. Sorry—it is housing authorities and district councils in areas where there is two-tier local government. District councils as housing authorities are specifically excluded. Under Every Child Matters, the Department for Children, Schools and Families has excluded housing authorities from responsibility. There is a clause that specifically excludes housing authorities; they are not responsible authorities, they are partner authorities, yet it is those authorities that have to deliver on this overcrowding standard. I welcome any improvement to the overcrowding standard; I think it is wonderful, but it must be delivered.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

May I come back to that issue? In fact, when I was a housing Minister, Karen Buck and I had long and turbulent discussions about mechanisms for dealing with homelessness, and the arrangements that were made between children’s services and housing services. The net result—because of legal difficulties that they are supposed to have protocols, which looked very much like what you have here—was that it does not work; it spectacularly does not work. Unless an authority has a clearly specified responsibility to do something, it will not do it. The authorities do not talk to each other. I have had endless problems with the county council and the borough council when we have talked to each other. For example, last weekend, we had a special needs couple with two children in a one-bedroom flat in disrepair, and the two authorities did not talk to each other about it. Would you look at moving housing authorities up to being responsible authorities?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I have one more question about two partner authorities that are not included. The first is development corporations, which are now responsible in some areas for procurement and allocation of land for housing, including social and affordable housing, which is a big issue. The second is race equality councils, given the big correlation between certain ethnic minority groups and poverty. I wonder whether thought has been given to how those two factors are delivered on.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I mean development corporations, not RDAs. It is the ones that were set up to do all the planning and delivery. They have the planning powers and all the rest of it now.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

I want to continue with the local authority theme and the duties imposed by the Bill on local authorities. The Minister will no doubt be aware of the cynicism over the indicator NI 116, which is widely seen as delivering merely a paper output. Many authorities have already chosen to unpack that and go for a range of more specific indicators that produce outcomes that are much more reflective of their own local circumstances. To what extent will the Government ensure that local authorities have the necessary flexibility and freedom to be able to match the Bill to their own circumstances?

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

The cynicism, Minister, is coming from the local authorities themselves. The numbers you cite are small in the great scheme of things, because they have opted for measurements of child poverty alleviation that are much more reflective of their own local needs. If you look at the local needs assessment regulations—the draft regulations that accompany the Bill—I have to ask why you have chosen to impose quite a rigid standardised view and have, again, not left the flexibility to local councils and local partnerships to pursue things that are much more targeted to what they know in their own area.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

One of the areas in which that is, perhaps, most significant is the thrust—both from the Bill and from the regulations—that leads councils to tackle that on a geographical basis, rather than family by family. Many councils opted out of looking at that on a geographical basis—opted out of saying, “We are going to have a programme that is there for a complete area”—because that is particularly wasteful and untargeted. They have found that using a family-by-family basis, and approaching that through the education system—which knows where families in poverty really are—is a much more effective approach. My reading of both the Bill and the draft regulations suggests that you are actually pushing councils away from that sort of approach.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

Lastly, what does the Bill do to bring together the voluntary sector and other partner organisations to deliver effectively and ensure that the innovation and energy is captured?

Jamie Reed (Labour, Copeland)

Aside from the abilities of front-line professionals working in this field for local authorities throughout the country, we have some dreadful local authorities up and down this country—some absolutely rotten organisations. We all know that. Recent cases of child abuse and child murder have in many ways proven this. What confidence do you have that every local authority can deliver what is being asked of it by the Bill?

Jamie Reed (Labour, Copeland)

I certainly hope that, in addition to the flexibilities that local authorities require to meet the specific needs in their localities, there will be some significant and effective—I almost hesitate to use this term—central control over those measurements and targets. Would that be right?

Jamie Reed (Labour, Copeland)

In the same way that we have discussed the potential for judicial review of existing or future Governments’ ability to meet the Bill’s requirements, what do you envisage as the power of central Government to take effective and immediate intervening steps to ensure that local authorities are doing what is required of them?

Jamie Reed (Labour, Copeland)

Finally, on a slightly different tack, how are the needs of children living in local authority care met under the Bill? How will local authorities meet the requirements of those children? What measurement processes will be in place to make sure that local authorities meet the needs of the children whom they have in looked-after care?

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

We have time for one last very succinct question and answer.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

The child poverty commission is overseeing a Bill that the regulatory impact assessment says will cost about £400 billion over 20 years. Its budget, according to that assessment, is £190,000. It will meet four times a year and appears to have no research budget. Does it have any real teeth? Does it have the resources to do the job?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Could it have a research budget, because otherwise it is just scavenging for what is lying around? If it needs research doing, can it have the budget to get it done?

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

I am afraid that that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of the witnesses.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to this sitting of the Child Poverty Bill Committee. I remind hon. Members and witnesses that we are bound by the deadline agreed this morning, so this afternoon’s first evidence session must end at 5.30 pm and the second session must end at 7 pm. I hope that I will not have to interrupt hon. Members or witnesses in the middle of sentences, but I will do so if need be.

We are here this afternoon to hear evidence from Kate Green of the Child Poverty Action Group, Neera Sharma of Barnardo’s, Fergus Drake from Save the Children and Kate Bell from Gingerbread. Members of the Committee will ask them questions and we look forward very much to their answers. I turn to Graham Stuart for the first question.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The Government missed their 2005 child poverty target, and they look almost certain to miss their 2010 child poverty target. They have a great incentive to bring forward legislation now so that you focus your attention on that rather than on their failure to meet their previous promises. Why do you think that legislation will give you more confidence about delivery in future than you could have had from the Government’s pledges in the past?

John Barrett (Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West)

In any other walk of life, “eradication” would mean the end of something, but the word has a different meaning in relation to the Bill. Are you happy with the use of “eradication” when it is clearly not eradication? Moreover, are you happy with the assessment used in the Bill as a description of “eradication”? Every time I use “eradication” it means something different from what we are going to be discussing here today. Is there a problem for those outside the loop in understanding exactly what the Bill means?

John Barrett (Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West)

Would you agree that within such a general target, there is the danger of specific groups—you mentioned disabled people—heading in the opposite direction, even if the overall target is being approached?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Have you made any assessment of how much tougher the targets are because there are four of them, rather than just one relative low-income target? What impact do you think that might have?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

May I explore the possibility of bringing a judicial review under the terms of the Bill? I will do that by assuming for a moment that a Bill similar to this one was enacted in 1997 and enshrined the 2010 target just as this Bill enshrines the 2020 target. Are there any circumstances from the past 12 years under which any of you would have been tempted to seek judicial review on a Government policy?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I would be interested in the views of the rest of you on that, but I take it that your view of the Bill is that it would enable you to seek judicial review any time between its enactment and 2020. It is not something whereby you have to wait until the last year or so and then seek judicial review.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

Kate Bell, a moment ago you said that you saw the public borrowing requirement as a key moment with regard to the 2010 target. Imagine that similar legislation was in place now with regard to the 2010 target. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the targets could be met if one spent an additional £4.2 billion on tax credits and benefits. Assuming that there was very little there towards meeting the 2010 child benefit target, with the benefit of this Bill, do you imagine you would seek to obtain judicial review to ensure that the Government spent more on this area?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

So are you saying that the Government have not had strategies in place to meet the target—they have merely had a target?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

If they had been, would you have been able to look at them and say, “This is inadequate; there is an opportunity here for judicial review to ensure the target is met”?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

May I ask one final question? Kate Green, you said that you saw the political pressure as the key driver in the Bill, as opposed to the judicial review side of it, although you obviously welcome that. Would the rest of you agree, or do you see being able to take the Government to court if they fail to abide by an appropriate strategy as the teeth of the Bill? Or is it the political pressure and the greater focus on child poverty in the Bill that is the key?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

If one were cynical, one could imagine a future Government sensing that there was trouble down the track—even getting wind that you were thinking of judicial review—and amending the Bill: “delete ‘2020’ and insert ‘2030’”, or “delete ‘2020’ and insert ‘as soon as is reasonably practicable’”. Does the Bill have any teeth? You cannot bind future Governments—we know that, and this is the nearest we can get to it. We will talk later about whether the child poverty commission has any teeth. Is there not only a political cost, as legal action could be forestalled? How strong is the Bill?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

But none of the parties has put anything credible in its manifesto that would come anywhere near that. They are all paying lip service, are they not?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

As you know, the Government are introducing a new indicator for persistent poverty, but as yet, exactly how that will be measured is not set out in detail. What would be an effective way of measuring sustained, persistent and deep poverty? Is there a risk that the indicator will once again allow Governments to concentrate on households just below the poverty level, and will not necessarily deal with deepened and sustained poverty?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

Are the Government right to have, to some extent, changed the goalposts a little by moving away from a clear after-housing-costs measurement of poverty, or does that not matter?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

Can you explain what the difference would be, or has been?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Clause 8 is the heart of the Bill in some ways; it deals with the UK strategies that the Secretary of State will have to put in place. There are clearly some good and important things there. I will not read them all out, but subsection (5) refers to the facilitation of employment, the development of skills, the provision of financial support, health, education and social services, housing and the natural environment. None of us would disagree with any of those.

What other areas that you consider important are missing from that list? I would be interested to hear from all of you about what shape you think the UK strategy should have. We have not done as well as we all would have liked, notwithstanding some progress over the past 10 years. So how will it be different? What drivers of poverty do we need to hit rather harder to really step up the progress over the next decade?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

May I press you all a little bit more on that, as it is really important and gets to the heart of the Bill? Do you think that there are any omissions in subsection (5)? Are there any things that are not there and make you think, “Gosh, if we are really going to make progress we need to do something about x”?

Secondly, I have not really heard anything from you about what extra things need to be done, or what needs to be done differently to try to step up the pace a bit. Sadly, we look as if we may not reach the 2010 target. We have got to do better. We cannot have more of the same, notwithstanding the progress made. I have not heard what I hoped to hear from those earlier answers, and I want to press you all a bit more.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Fergus, I wanted to ask you about the excellent films that you produced, in which one of the factors that the young people identified as being a problem for child poverty was overcrowding. Would you welcome the kind of measures that Helen talked about this morning, where the Bill would improve the standards for overcrowding from the pretty abysmal current standards?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

What we heard this morning was that the overcrowding standards will be improved by the Bill; I remember in the films that overcrowding was particularly mentioned. Are you concerned that those standards need to be properly monitored and enforced, if they are higher than the standards that are accepted currently as constituting statutory overcrowding?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Would you want to see them properly enforced?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

What I was concerned about is that Kate Green has now mentioned the problems of conflicting bits of legislation, which there could be here. There is even a conflict between the Children and Young Person’s Act 2008 and some immigration legislation. Are you concerned that some of the very good measures in the Bill might be overridden by other bits of legislation, for example on access to housing?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Where?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Fergus, at that event the young people also talked very specifically about the business about holidays—something that some people might think is marginal to child poverty, but was clearly important to them. Are you concerned that quite a number of those measures are tucked away in the regulations as side issues rather than being in the Bill? How do you think we can ensure that those issues are carried through and enforced?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Bearing in mind that not all local authorities are responsible authorities—that is something else that we discussed this morning—do you think that a local authority, faced with a choice between repairing a pavement and letting a poor kid go on holiday, might prioritise the pavement over the child? That is the kind of thing that I am thinking about.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Do you feel that there is enough in the Bill to look at the overlap between ethnicity and poverty among children?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Do you think it a mistake to exclude mental health trusts from the list of responsible authorities and partner authorities? They appear not to be listed in either list—neither are acute trusts or the new health delivery bodies. [Interruption.] If you look on page 10, you will see that under health, you have the strategic health authority and the primary care trust, but you do not have mental health trusts with a specific duty, despite the fact that one would think that there is a fairly clear link between mental ill health and poverty.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Do any of our witnesses wish to respond to that?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Andrew, do you have a question on the list itself?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Yes. Briefly, I would like to press a bit further on that general point. In the list of partner authorities in clause 19 you see police authorities and chief officers of police but not further education colleges or chambers of commerce, for example. The list is slightly odd to me. I wonder whether any of your eyebrows have been raised at some of the partner authorities included and whether there were any that you thought should be included.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

It seems to me that the list is an interesting area. Maybe our witnesses would wish to send in a supplementary memorandum when they have had time to think about it.

Minister, you have been very patient.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

This is a question for all of you but I think Kate Bell might have some particular insights. Do you think that family breakdown is a major driver of child poverty? Should it have been added to the list of building blocks in clause 8? Are there obvious policies that could be introduced to reduce family breakdown and have a major impact on child poverty in this country?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

Kate Green, I would like to follow up quickly your comments on concerns about the proposed fiscal responsibility Bill and welfare reform. Coming back to my earlier question, given the duties on the Secretary of State under clause 1, are there areas here where there may be scope for taking the Government to judicial review because they fail to abide by those duties in pursuit of other policies, such as welfare reform ones?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

You have had your successes.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

You have all raised the importance of child care, and it is obviously the key to employment for many people. It has to be affordable and accessible. How could that be put into legislation? Do you think it should be?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Of course what you say about child care being central to children’s well-being and vital for parents’ employment opportunities is absolutely true, but do you not feel that the duties that were put on to local authorities, with respect to provision, information and introducing child care in a way designed to increase equality in local areas, have already covered that point? If we were to incorporate it into the Bill, would that not be an unnecessary duplication?

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

Earlier, you described the work that you do, which we are all aware of, at a strategic level with central Government. However, what the Bill does is to pass a lot of the responsibility for delivery over to local government. How do you see your role and your working relationships with local government in practice as a result of the Bill?

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

What on the ground do you see yourselves doing differently or additionally after this Bill has received Royal Assent that you do not already do?

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

I do not think that I have quite got the answer about the additionality issue that I am seeking, regarding your own view about what you will be doing differently as a result of the Bill. You say that there might be a different type of commissioning, but is there anything else there? After all, local government already has a generalised indicator and a whole lot of sub-indicators that it can work to. I am just trying to grasp how you see the landscape differing, at a practical level, after the Bill is passed.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

What, given your experience so far of having worked with local government, do you think it needs by way of additional resources to make the policy work?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

You have been quite upbeat about the benefits of decentralising some responsibility to local government, and I am sure that there are some grounds for that and that more good practice can be encouraged. But can I push you further on the flipside of that? There is a risk, particularly in a much larger country than the Nordic countries, with a much more decentralised press, with much less scrutiny and political pressure on individual local authorities, that some authorities—I would probably say many—will find ways of possibly not taking some decisions that are hard to deliver. They will have strategies, but they could easily say that the big-ticket items for dealing with poverty are the benefit system, the tax system, employment and pay, all of which are outwith the responsibility of a local authority. It will actually be quite slippery—quite hard—to hold to account those authorities that have other priorities than child poverty. What would you encourage Ministers and Parliament to do to ensure that there are measures for and means of holding to account those authorities that will sign up to a strategy but are not going to be the ones in the forefront of good practice?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

You mentioned some good practice, and you are all meant to be doing some work with local authorities. Tell me where there isn’t good practice. Are there any authorities that are not really stepping up to the plate and not showing a great deal of interest, or is every local authority in Britain engaging in this?

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

I want to ask about the devolved countries and how you think they would fit into this UK-wide strategy. Obviously Wales is going to have its own new poverty strategy this year or next year—how do you think that will fit into the overall UK strategy?

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

Obviously some of the policies in Wales and Scotland, such as free prescriptions or free breakfasts for children, have an impact on poverty. Some of those initiatives are, say, not available in England, so there will have to be different measures than for a UK-wide strategy.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

How should incentives be altered for those in local authorities such as chief executives and others? All Governments talk about not rewarding failure and rewarding success, but the tendency is towards precisely the opposite. You inevitably get drawn in, such as when Liverpool was failing in the 1980s, with Governments giving the authorities money because they cannot let people sit with failure. The real incentives for success are rarely there for those on the ground, so the rich areas get less and the poorer areas get more. The poorer the area, the more money it gets. Do you have any thoughts on incentives and how we should align them so as to ensure that we get positive feedback all the way through, and do not suffer perverse eddies in the incentive structure?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

You make the extremely good point that Governments of all colours always act in the way that you say, despite the pronouncements that they make. How can we cut through that to ensure that the most positive incentives are put in place? Successive Governments have wanted to challenge poverty and underachievement, and have put in place resources towards that end, but in many places we have not seen the response that we would have liked.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Is it possible that the Bill could end up having perverse effects? Is there a way in which local authorities and local government could go for short-term measures? For instance, as has been mentioned, the IFS says how much can be spent on benefits, yet the Centre for Social Justice has reported on the disincentives in the system. The Minister spoke this morning of her belief that there had been improvements, which would obviously be welcome, but are there dangers that we need to watch out for? Are there changes that could be made to the Bill to ensure that we do not allow the short-term political desire of meeting the target to go against the long-term desire of creating opportunity for all and the other broad policy changes that are needed?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Could we end up with many people just above the artificial 60 per cent. figure—with them being pushed over that figure to meet a target? Is that a realistic danger?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

The Committee now wishes to turn to the child poverty commission.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

What, in the witnesses’ view, is the rationale for having the child poverty commission?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Would you agree that, in the process of consultation, the powers of the commission have been significantly strengthened?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Are you satisfied by the proposals in the Bill to publish the advice and require the Secretary of State to have regard to it, with the experiences laid out by members of the commission?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I think that that last point is a powerful one, having been involved with the Climate Change Bill. The shadow commission more or less dictated the amendment of the Bill—to an 80 per cent. reduction—and made it powerful.

To be momentarily cynical again, the child poverty unit’s impact assessment of the Bill says that the child poverty commission will meet four times a year and have 14 staff. It tells us the cost of their travel. It even includes the cost of a room; I am surprised that it does not include tea and biscuits. The commission will oversee Government spending of £400 billion, according to the Bill, over the next 20 years, with an annualised running cost of £190,000. The civil service staff will be one policy grade 7—I am sure that they will be a splendid person, but that is not terribly senior—and an executive officer, who does minutes, I suppose. There is an £80 day rate for people attending. It is all a bit half-hearted, is it not?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Does that sound adequate to you?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Do you think that the Bill should provide for the child poverty commission to be abolished once the job is done?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

I think that there are no further questions, so that brings us to the end of this evidence session. On behalf of the Committee, I thank Kate Green, Neera Sharma, Fergus Drake and Kate Bell.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Good afternoon and welcome to the second session of the afternoon. We are now going to hear evidence from Catherine Fitt from the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services, Colin Green from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, Kevan Collins from the London borough of Tower Hamlets, Richard Kemp from the Local Government Association, and Paul Carter from Kent county council. Welcome to all of you. I start by asking John Howell for a question.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

Local authorities already have a number of ways of prioritising child poverty. They have the NI 116 as an overall indicator of child poverty, and they can sign up to a number of specific indicators that better reflect the local circumstances. They also have relationships with myriad other partnerships on the ground, and in many authorities I am aware that the child poverty agenda goes right through those partnerships. The basic question is: what does the Bill add to that?

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

What you have just described is a situation, if I read it correctly, that Kent has been involved in for some time. What I am trying to grasp is what you would do differently, if the Bill were to be passed tomorrow, as a result of its passage?

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

I think that that goes to the heart of another question really, picking up the consistency argument that Catherine Fitt made. Surely, what we need to establish in the Bill is a balance between some consistency and quite a lot of flexibility, because the solutions for tackling child poverty will not be the same in each area. How will we get that balance, or do you see that balance already within the Bill?

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

How do you see the relationship between central Government, with its responsibilities under the Bill, and local government working out? Is it one of stick, or one of carrot? The Bill threatens, or promises, guidance. How do you see that guidance coming into effect on this issue?

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

May I pick up on that last point? One way in which the money is going to be channelled is through a pooled fund. I know from my previous experience in local government that pooled funds have had a chequered history in terms of the ability of people to put money in and to access them. In your experience of them, is there anything that would help to improve things?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Andrew, do you want to talk to Mr. Kemp?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Briefly. On Total Place, and picking up what Paul Carter was saying about it earlier, I am particularly interested in the relationship of local authorities with the benefits system. I have just received a brief from my own local authority, which is one of the Total Place pilots. It says that it is not happy with things at the moment. I would be interested in any ideas or thoughts about how we could get the partnership between local authorities and Jobcentre Plus to work better.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Catherine Fitt—[Interruption.] Oh, sorry. Did you want to come back in?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Paul Carter mentioned Total Place. He or any of the other panellists may want to add to that, but that was helpful—thank you.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I want to ask a question about partner authorities that has already been raised. Under clause 19, we have a list of partner authorities that have a responsibility to co-operate with the responsible local authority. It also appears to be the case under clause 20 that each responsible local authority must make arrangements with each of the partner authorities. Can I ask whether the list under clause 19—apologies to those of you who have not had a chance to study it—is the right one? It consists of an interesting range of people, including district councils, police authorities, chief officers of police, integrated transport authorities, Transport for London—where relevant—strategic health authorities, primary care trusts and youth offending teams. I do not know whether anyone has had an opportunity to look at the list or whether there are any other organisations that you think should have a responsibility to co-operate. Also, given that there is an obligation involved—it is a case of “must” make arrangements rather than “may” make arrangements—is there anyone on the list who should not be there?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I want to ask about housing authorities. If housing authorities are included in the list of responsible authorities, they would presumably have to incorporate the housing strategies, which will pull in the housing associations. Do you agree with that, Richard?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

The other thing that I want to ask about is partnership working. On children’s needs, we have two-tier local government with the county council and children’s services, and the district council and housing services. One of you—I think it was Paul—referred earlier to the difficulty of the joint working protocols. Do you find that those work well? Richard might have views on that as well.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Colin, in terms of dealing with vulnerable children—Catherine, you have probably seen this as well—my observation is that slip-ups have quite often been due to a lack of information getting through to the children’s services about where the child is. Are you concerned about the need to ensure that much more real meat is given to the need for joint working protocols to be effective if we are to tackle poverty and vulnerability among children?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Final question if you could, Sally.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Under the overcrowding provisions, it is virtually impossible to be statutorily overcrowded unless you manage to have an exceptionally large family in an exceptionally small flat. The legislation is going to improve and tighten the standards. In those cases that are sort of off to one side, and that would be managed by a partner authority, not a responsible authority—so it would be down the edge—how will you ensure that the standards are properly enforced by the responsible authority, and that children get the benefit of the tighter standards?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Thank you. Sally, if you will forgive us, we need to move on. Judy Mallaber, you have been extremely patient.

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

Thank you. I am not sure that we are still in any sensible order on questioning.

Going back to the very first comments in this evidence session, you talked, Catherine, about the value of the Bill probably being in its seeking to bring consistency across the country. Taking on board Richard’s and some others’ earlier comments about how to ensure that we have co-operation, we know that duties are placed on both responsible local authorities and partner authorities within the legislation, and that there are powers within the Bill for the Secretary of State to add people to partner authorities or take them off, and powers for local authorities to consult organisations. Within all that, what would be the appropriate response if a local authority, or indeed a partner authority, failed to deliver on its duties? That would be moving against what you are seeking to do in terms of providing consistency.

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

So, are you suggesting that it would not be possible to assess whether a local authority had failed in its duties under the Bill?

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

Is the local authority the appropriate body to bear a duty locally for reducing child poverty, and, if not, what alternatives might there be?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The ADCS thinks that child poverty is an unhelpful expression. Could you expand on that, Colin, and could other members of the panel comment on whether they think the whole focus on child poverty in particular is misconceived?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Does anyone disagree with Colin?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

That is a helpful thing to say, because this discussion is the absolute crux of the evidence that we have heard in the past hour. I admit that I am feeling a bit anxious about it. What I have been hearing in the general responses to questions so far is some important thinking and analysis, but it is all about something different: the multiple problems of children and families of the kind that Paul discussed as being within Westminster’s family recovery project. That is a Government programme, by the way, but be that as it may, it contains 100 children. Actually, there are 2.9 million children living in poverty in this country. You have just brought our attention, helpfully, to the figure in Kent, which is 48,000. That is what the Bill is about.

Local authorities may well have varying numbers, and will therefore consider how they might want to tackle that as authorities and in partnership, but surely the Child Poverty Bill and its responsibilities on local authorities are about addressing the number of children living below the poverty line. What I want to hear back from all of you is whether that is what you are talking about too. I am not sure that I have heard that it is. If that is what you are talking about, how will you develop a strategy that reduces the number of children living in poverty under the indicators that the Bill specifically requires us to achieve?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Helen Goodman wants to leap in at this point.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

You have all talked, quite reasonably, about the importance of co-operating also with Jobcentre Plus. I am the Minister for DWP, so I wanted to check out with you whether you are conscious of the partnership that we are running in Birmingham—the multi-area agreement—which includes Jobcentre Plus. Do you know anything about that? We have positive experience in some places, but I am not sure whether you are conscious of it.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Of course I understand that sometimes things go well and sometimes things do not go well—we do realise that—but the point that I was trying to make was that these partnerships exist in some places. I was getting the impression from the way you were talking that you were not conscious of any partnerships with Jobcentre Plus and local authority agencies anywhere.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

Following on from Karen’s question, I think that she was absolutely right in that a lot of what we have heard from you today about addressing deep, severe and persistent poverty, which we all support, and also about the very long-term aspects of creating the right environment and so on, will not necessarily have an immediate impact on getting people above the 60 per cent. target. Do you have any concerns that the 60 per cent. target might divert resources from what you are already doing? Richard, you made the point that there are only so many things that you can do. Is the point more that, as far as the 60 per cent. target is concerned, the effective things that can be done are to do with tax and benefits and so on, and it is more a central than a local government point?

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

Following on from that point—maybe each of you might have a quick view on this—should it be about having an impact assessment of all that you do as local authorities to see what the effect on poverty is? One of the things that is very concerning about government, including local government, is that the delivery of one service will directly cut across the attempt to achieve another target. For example, everyone has talked about child care and agrees that it is an incredibly important engine for delivery on child poverty, but local authorities are busy increasing their rents to child care providers, immediately having the effect of pushing up the charges to parents. That is because there is somehow no read-across from one area of service to another. Is that something that should be the basic—probably the starting point—child poverty policy in each area?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Paul, a little while ago you quite rightly made the point that the Bill is pretty much a blank canvas. It talks about the mechanisms, the legal framework and the strategies that will need to be written, but the content is quite blank. I should be interested to hear from you and anyone else on the panel what you think needs to be in it, both nationally and locally. You have talked about some of what you have done in Kent, but I should appreciate a slightly fuller answer.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Yes.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Thank you, Paul. That was very useful.

Kevan, something you said earlier was fascinating and very radical. You were talking about the possible flexibility of the benefits system and the fact that it is not flexible. You said that it does not do flexibility, that it is set down nationally, is incredibly prescriptive and that there are thousands of pages of rules, regulations and so on. I am intrigued by the idea of local flexibility. You are on to something there. Will you outline a bit more of what you would like to see, or what you were alluding to in that regard?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

I see unanimous nodding heads from our witnesses.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

How will children’s trust boards be involved formally with the work of local authorities to meet their duties in reducing child poverty?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Children’s trust boards may not be working very well; there is mixed information so far on how effective they have been—all sorts of things around the difficulties of pooled budgets, partnership working and junior people turning up after the first couple of meetings; all that sort of stuff. If they are the main vehicle and they do not work we have a serious problem, haven’t we? Don’t we need a plan B?

John Barrett (Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West)

I want to move away from the wider issues to a specific group—children in local authority care. You mentioned, Paul, that there are 1,000 in Kent. There are also unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. How should the measurements for child poverty be made for those specific children?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I want to connect the points made by Mr. Green and Mr. Carter. Let us say that one took a child-centred approach. I was not exactly sure, from what Mr. Carter was saying, what the benefits to the children would be of the approach that he proposes. I could see the benefits of it to the local authority, in that it is easier to organise, better to run, more straightforward to manage and so on, but how precisely would what you were saying about not allowing children to be placed away from the central London boroughs help the children?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Yes, but I was asking about the child’s perspective, not the local authority’s perspective; that was my question.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Just a little one, Sally.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

You made the point quite frequently about the mobility of certain children and issues about having a strategy to deal with that. I used to be a leader in Southwark, which regularly sent children and people down to Kent. Do you find in the Bill anything that deals with that specific issue or do you think that something should be put in to deal with the problem of transience and mobility?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

So what do you think should go in specifically to deal with the transience or the mobility issue?

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

Do you need any more particular powers or resources to ensure that looked-after children are not living in poverty?

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

Are there any other powers that could prevent children from ending up in poverty?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Thank you, Catherine. We will now move on to Andrew Selous.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I wonder whether you could elaborate a little on something you said earlier. You talked about some of the families in acute need who were having budgets in total of perhaps £100,000 or £150,000 a year spent on them and you said that perhaps there was not always the collaboration that is required. I just wondered what your thoughts were on how that collaboration would work from the perspective of management, budget-holding, reporting and accountability. I think that is almost the holy grail for a lot of people in terms of these really difficult social problems, but I have never quite managed to get my mind round how it works in terms of reporting lines, budgets and so on. If you have any thoughts on that, I would be very grateful to hear them.

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

My question is possibly not directed so much at you, Kevan, because I think this is very true for your area. Of course, half the households in poverty do not live in council properties or housing association properties. This is a little bit of the same danger that I have raised before: we are looking at poverty through the prism of the Bill, and we are constantly coming back to a hard core of multiply disadvantaged families. They exist—and you are on the front line dealing with that real issue—but for the purposes of the Bill, we need to focus not just on those families with multiple difficulties, but on income poverty, employment and what you do about households that own their own homes, not just those who are tenants. This just keeps drifting back to the same sort of categorisation of people in poverty but I am really not sure about that. It worries me that that is the local authority mindset.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

May I put this to you, particularly in light of what Richard has said? There are various poverty measures in the Bill, and clause 24 sets out the measures that apply to local authorities. One of the measures is described as the relative low income target— 60 per cent. below medium income. Some other measures relate to an absolute level of income and others relate to material deprivation combined with low income. Is it the view of our witnesses that the 60 per cent. target is perhaps not appropriate in the context of local authorities?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I want to move on to joined-up working with other authorities—other bodies—but may I just ask you about this 48,000 number? The national figure of 2.9 million or whatever is based on a sample survey that has been grossed up. The samples are too small to give a figure on that basis for any local authority. The Kent number cannot be a pro rata of that and cannot be based on that same data source. I am not arguing with you, but how can you possibly know that 48,000 Kent children are in households whose total household income—you probably do not know that income, unless they are on benefit—is less than 60 per cent. of the equivalent median? Can you know that? Where does the 48,000 come from?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

It is 2.9 million. However, if local authorities have to make progress on child poverty, but no local authority has a local authority number because the figures are national, it is hard for them to know if they are making progress. They do not know, and I do not know how they could know.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

On that point, let me move on to the question I was getting to about benefit take-up, joint working and so on. It constantly drives me mad—and it drives real people mad—that if someone gets a low-paid job, they have to tell the tax credit people, housing benefit, council tax benefit, jobseeker’s allowance people and so on. You have to tell everybody—probably several times over in different forms and at different times. Why is it so difficult? Is it, pejoratively, “your” fault or is it “their” fault that these things cannot be brought together so that one set of information—perhaps comprehensive information—is given to one person?

You mentioned one-stop shops and housing benefit administration. Why is it that you cannot simply take the information that has already been given? We keep hearing about take-up pilots and that we are going to make benefit entitlement automatic, but it never bloomin’ well happens. What is the problem?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Has the situation become worse with tax credits? In a sense, it was once just the good old Department of Health and Social Security, or whatever it was at the time. Now the Inland Revenue—HMRC—is far more involved in the day-to-day lives of families with children through the tax credit system. Has it got worse on the ground? Is it more difficult to bring these things together?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am not going to take the Committee down the path of defending the great transformation that is under way at the moment in the way that benefits are delivered. Instead, I would like to ask the witnesses about their relationships with the voluntary sector. Local government finds central Government quite inflexible, and I think that sometimes the voluntary sector finds local government a little bit inflexible. I was wondering how you were intending to use the new partnership arrangements in the Bill to work with the voluntary sector, and whether you think that the provisions in the Bill are helpful and adequate.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Following up on that, would you say that the experience of bidding for money from the future jobs fund, which is intended to be Government money from DWP for moving people from benefits to things that have community benefit, has been a good precedent that could be built on in that arena?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

You may be anxious about how you are going to find 1,700 jobs, but you must have put in a good bid, because you got the money to do it.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

If Members have no further questions, that brings us to the end of our business for today. On behalf of the Committee, I thank very much indeed Richard Kemp, Colin Green, Catherine Fitt, Paul Carter and Kevan Collins.