Child Poverty Bill

Public Bill Committee, 27 October 2009.

Clause 1

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I beg to move amendment 59, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, at end insert—

‘(e) the reductions in the causes of poverty targets in section [The reductions in the causes of poverty targets].’.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 3—The reductions in the causes of poverty targets—

‘(1) The Secretary of State shall make regulations setting out the causes of poverty targets.

(2) Such targets may include, but are not limited to:

(a) low educational attainment and erratic school performance;

(b) school leavers not in education, employment or training;

(c) registrations on the Child Protection Plan;

(d) teenage smoking and obesity;

(e) teenage pregnancy;

(f) children in homes with drug and alcohol addiction;

(g) children growing up in jobless households;

(h) serious personal debt.’.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Good morning, Mr. Key. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in the scrutinising and the amending part of our Public Bill Committee deliberations. As far as the Opposition are concerned, amendment 59 and new clause 3 are significant, and I hope that you will permit me to speak for a little time on them. They go to the heart of the Bill, dealing with the issue that was discussed extensively in our evidence sessions about getting the balance right between dealing with the causes of poverty—the pathways that lead families and children into lives of poverty—and alleviating its symptoms and effects.

I say to Government Members that amendment 59 and new clause 3 do not detract in any way from the existing income and material deprivation targets in clauses 2 to 5. The amendment and the new clause will leave those clauses, which we support, absolutely intact. I say emphatically that the proposals are not wrecking amendments. They would put in the Bill an additional target that would help us to achieve the 2020 target and do the serious work of reducing the various pathways that lead families and children into poverty, not just up to 2020, but well beyond that date.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

This is an interesting proposal, and I look forward to hearing the hon. Gentleman develop the detail of his argument. I want to ask some overarching questions about his approach. I suspect that he—indeed, like my colleagues—has in the past condemned the culture of central Government setting a target for this, a target for that and so on. The Bill already has four targets, and his new clause would add perhaps another eight. Is there some inconsistency there? How does the hon. Gentleman reconcile the two?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

The hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely fair and proper point, as he often does. I am not someone who seeks extra targets for the sake of it, and I accept his general point. In particular, when we come on to part 2 of the Bill, which deals with local government, my colleagues and I may want to include fewer targets and give local authorities in particular slightly more freedom in their approach. Hopefully, the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West will support us in that.

My worry, as the Committee heard extensively during the witness sessions, centres on the danger of keeping the current targets alone. They may drive policy in the wrong direction, keeping it in the area of income transfer—important as that is—without dealing with some of the serious issues that cause families to be in poverty in the first place. We do not propose imposing extra targets in the Bill lightly—we do so for a serious reason. We think that it will get to the heart of what we are all about in this Committee, which is turning lives around in a serious and substantial way. We fear that the four targets in the Bill alone might not do that, because the temptation, as has been said in Committee, could be just to whack out tax credits in 2018-19. Even the hon. Member for Northavon himself said that that might be the case.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

May I help my hon. Friend out? It seems to me, as someone who has devoted his life to eradicating targets, that the targets that would be included in the Bill by virtue of new clause 3 and amendment 59 merely recognise that that is the way in which local government is already working to tackle poverty. It is therefore an appropriate way to overcome the mismatch in the Bill between the income targets, which are macro-economic and central Government-related, and the activities that are taking place on the ground.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has particular expertise in local government, in which he served with distinction for a number of years. In subsection (2)(a) to (h) of new clause 3, he and his local government colleagues will recognise a number of targets on which local authorities up and down the country are already seriously engaged to try to deal effectively with child poverty in their area.

I was struck during the witness sessions by how much support there was—not just from the people who gave evidence—for the general approach that I am putting to the Committee.

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

The hon. Gentleman refers to the witness statements, but I quizzed the witnesses about the difficulty already referred to. We say that we should not have too many targets, yet the Opposition now suggest that we have a lot more targets. I could add another 20 to the list. Does he not accept that the Bill places two duties on the Secretary of State? The first relates to the minimum income targets, but the second relates to the strategy, which will be informed by the child poverty commission. Rather than us putting suggestions in the Bill, surely the commission should be doing that job.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

The hon. Lady makes a perfectly fair point, but the danger is that if we stick with the targets that are in the Bill, from clauses 2 to 5, they and they alone will drive the strategy in clause 8, and it will be wholly directed to fulfilling—

Judy Mallaberrose—

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Perhaps the hon. Lady will let me develop my argument a little further. The strategy will be wholly directed to fulfilling those targets; they will be statutory obligations on the Secretary of State.

We mentioned the witness sessions, so let me go through some of the points made in support of this general approach. The hon. Lady’s colleague, the hon. Member for Copeland, said at column 21 of Hansard on 20 October that he was concerned about not addressing the real cultural issues involved in leading families into poverty. The first thing that Councillor Paul Carter, the leader of Kent county council, spoke about, at column 51, was the tremendous importance of doing serious long-term work to get families out of poverty, which is what new clause 3 is about. In column 55, Kevan Collins, the chief executive of Tower Hamlets council, said that the Bill needed to be about breaking the cycles of inter-generational poverty.

In column 82 on 22 October, Charlotte Pickles from the Centre for Social Justice made the point that were we to increase benefit take-up alone, that would not break the cycle of inter-generational poverty. Indeed, the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North—perhaps she will speak for herself during the debate—said that targets were only part of the whole story, and I agree with her on that point.

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

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, as he mentioned my name. My point is—there is cross-party consensus on this—that poverty is multi-dimensional, and it is addressed in the “Opportunity for all” strategy. There are many families and children whose poverty can be ascribed to many complex social and cultural factors. Among Labour Members, however, what underpins the Bill is the fact that the 2.9 million children living in poverty do so because they do not have enough money, and if we do not have a financially driven programme around benefits and wages and so forth in this Bill, of all Bills, we are in danger of missing nine out of 10 of the children currently below the poverty line.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I have no argument with the hon. Lady on that point. As I have already said, we are leaving clauses 2 to 5 intact. We are committed to those targets, but this is an important argument because our contention is that we will not really succeed in meeting the targets in clauses 2 to 5 unless the strategy in clause 8 is focused on the additional set of targets that we want to put into new clause 3, which would become clause 6 of the Bill, were it agreed to.

Let me pray in aid some of the other witnesses who came before us. At column 109, on 22 October, Mike Brewer of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Donald Hirsch from Loughborough university were asked whether to achieve the aims of the Bill one needs to address the longer-term causes of poverty in the early years, to which they both said yes. Mike Brewer said:

“I share the reservations...that all the targets are about family income.”

He went on to say:

“I wish that there were a broader range of indicators”.——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 104, Q203.]

My concern is that we could achieve the targets, but not turn people’s lives around in the way that would be necessary to break inter-generational cycles of poverty. Edna Speed told the Committee how her organisation, Save the Family, managed to do that, and said that

“86 per cent. of our families are turned round for ever.”——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 84, Q168.]

That is a pretty impressive statistic. Neil O’Brien, from Policy Exchange, spoke about the current set of targets driving public policy to

“relentlessly...downstream intervention to give people income, rather than...tackle the causes.”

He spoke of it being necessary to align

“your targets to your broader strategy”.——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 101, Q199]

That is the central point. Clause 8 will focus solely on meeting the targets in clauses 2 to 5.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I have two questions for my hon. Friend—or perhaps a comment and a question. One of the criticisms made of the target culture is the fact that the targets chosen, however worthy, distort the broader range of policies. That is particularly important in an area in which, as the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North said, there is such complexity involved, so would the addition of a greater number of targets perhaps lead to a more rounded policy approach? Does my hon. Friend have reservations—perhaps I am in a minority of one—about the fact that the setting of targets in statutory form as an essential aspect of ongoing policy is fundamentally incorrect and self-distorting?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

In relation to my hon. Friend’s first point, my argument is that we will ultimately not be successful by 2020, or by any other date, in achieving the targets in clauses 2 to 5 without doing serious work on what leads families, often over many generations—five generations were mentioned by some of the witnesses—into poverty.

On the point about putting that on a legal basis, I understand the concern expressed by hon. Members. The Government have failed to meet their 2005 target, and they are likely to fail to reach their 2010 target by about a third. As my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire said on Second Reading, they are now reaching for legislation, having failed without legislation. There is a question as to what difference a Bill will make—that is a legitimate view. However, a Bill is being considered in Committee. We are all committed, across the House, to really dealing with, and eradicating, child poverty if we possibly can, and to driving it down as much as possible. To do that, we need to make sure that the strategy in the Bill does the job by focusing on what drives people into poverty in the first place.

The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and her Department used to publish that sort of data in the Government report “Opportunity for all”, until 2007. I am not aware that she has explained why the Department suddenly stopped publishing that information, as a number of witnesses, including, I think, Neil O’Brien from Policy Exchange, pointed out. The data that the Department used to publish focused on children in workless households, and looked at teenage pregnancy, the proportion of children in disadvantaged areas with a good level of development, the number of NEETs—people not in education, employment or training—the number of 16 to 18-year-olds in learning, obesity in children, and a number of other factors. Bizarrely, that publication was stopped. Some Members will perhaps be familiar with the statistics produced by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which cover more than child poverty—they go across the age range. The JRF report, “Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2008”, contains 56 indicators, and notes whether there have been improvements and whether the situation is steady or has got worse across a range of those indicators. It is an incredibly valuable document in terms of driving policy. Indeed, Save the Children applies a similar rubric.

Finally, the New Economics Foundation and Action for Children report, “Backing the Future: why investing in children is good for us all”, came out a month or two ago and I am struck by a couple of sentences in its summary. The document, which I would commend to all Members if they have not read it, talks about

“why it is essential to address the impact of the structural factors affecting the circumstances of children’s lives”.

It also mentions how

“the UK Government could fund a transition to a more preventative system, therefore turning aspiration into reality.”

The report points out:

“When compared with our European neighbours, the UK comes bottom of the pile on almost every preventable social problem—crime, mental ill health, family breakdown, drug use, or obesity.”

Furthermore, an incredibly striking point is that

“the UK has to spend a third more in addressing the consequences of its social problems than the next most troubled nation.”

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire, who is part of the shadow Treasury team, will have noted that the UK is forced to spend a third more than the next most troubled nation in Europe on some deep-seated social problems.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

If the hon. Lady will let me finish, I will give way to her. The report states that

“the UK has some of the lowest levels of child well-being when compared with countries of similar economic wealth,”

and says:

“Our 16-24-year-olds, for example, record the lowest levels of trust and belonging in Europe.”

It is therefore not only the Opposition making the points that I have outlined. The Action for Children and New Economics Foundation report is very serious.

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

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that part of the strength of the report’s analysis, with which I agree, has its roots in decades of under-investment in child care and effective welfare-to-work strategies, and in policies that led to a trebling of child poverty during the 1980s? It is not possible to take the report as a snapshot and argue that all those factors and decades of under-investment did not play an important part.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I am not here to play a blame-allocation game. My purpose is to try to get the policy right for the future. Edna Speed, who travelled from the north-west to attend an evidence sitting, said that she hoped that she had not made a wasted journey and that the Committee would do the serious work to get the policy right for the future. There has been a tendency across Governments of both parties for far too long to use sticking-plasters as solutions and to send out ambulances without doing some of the long-term, tough—it is not easy—deep, preventive work that is necessary to deal with families in the constituency of the hon. Member for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North, as well as with families in my constituency and, in some cases, whole communities that have suffered severe inter-generational poverty. We are talking about long-term, deep, serious work, not quick headlines, and it is needed alongside the targets in clauses 2 to 5.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Good morning, Mr. Key. The amendment and new clause are well-meaning, because they address things that we want to do something about. The question is whether they should have statutory force and be included in the Bill. I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, but I do not think that he addressed my earlier intervention. I suspect that every Government Minister throughout history has said that, in general, micro-management and target-setting are a bad thing, but that their targets are good targets. The hon. Gentleman gave a slight sense of that by suggesting that he would strip away bad targets and have lots of new, good ones.

New clause 3 itself indicates that its list of eight targets is not exhaustive. For example, the list includes children growing up

“in homes with drug and alcohol addiction”,

but not those in homes where an adult or child has a mental health problem. One might subset and say, “Okay, we will put that one in.” Then one might ask about the children whose parents experience racial discrimination in employment and as a result are less likely to get jobs and more likely to live in poverty, and say, “We will put that on the list.” Suddenly there is a much less focused debate. Does one say, “Well, 100 targets would be ridiculous, so we will have the big 10”? Then there is distortion, as the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness suggested, because some things are on the target list and some are not.

The point about the Bill is that it focuses on a narrow range of goals—on different measures of material deprivation, such as income poverty, persistent poverty and so on. The risk is of losing focus. My view, as I will explain later, is that four targets are too many. One of my worries about having four targets plus the eight in the new clause, or whatever the number, is that there would then be 12 targets, and the Government of the day could say, “We haven’t done too badly; we got seven out of 12.” We want to focus on one specific goal for which the Government are held to account. One worry about the absolute poverty target is that it is a sitter. It is a penalty with the goalkeeper having gone off. The Government will hit that one, so that is one out of four already. A future Government might say, “Well, two out of four ain’t bad.” As soon as we do that, there is a danger that we dilute what we are trying to achieve. We want to do something about all the things on the list for their own sake, and possibly as a means to the end of tackling child poverty, but the Bill is about tackling child poverty in a particular way and we risk losing focus. I hope that we will get the chance to have a short stand part debate on clause 1, so I will not go any broader than the subject of the amendment and the new clause.

The only other danger that I would highlight is that various other parts of Government will rightly try to tackle the issues. I am concerned that we would let the Government off the hook if we diluted the targets. We risk having a massive debate about what is in the Bill, and what is not. Presumably, the list in new clause 3 is not fixed in time, either. In other words, whereas we have a 10-year target of tackling child poverty on an income measure, things would come on to the list and go off it as society changes. We will still be bothered about income poverty in 10 years’ time, but some of the issues in the list might become less prevalent, and others more prevalent, as time goes by. Do we want to be constantly updating and changing? Or do we end up with a list of out-of-date targets, because although there is a whole set of bigger issues that should be on it, it is too late to change primary legislation?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

New clause 3 is drafted to allow the capability to amend and update. The list is not exclusive. Indeed, the eight targets listed are not compulsory; they are targets that may be included. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the need to focus on different issues at different times, because some matters may be addressed and others may emerge, but the amendment allows that flexibility.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

It does, but the question is: where would we start? Would we start with a list that is broadly the length of that in the new clause? I do not know what is in the hon. Gentleman’s mind. That would worry me. Four plus eight makes 12 targets. Do we let the Government off the hook if they hit seven, eight or nine? Do we count ourselves as quibbling if they miss only two, but they are the two big ones? Or do we have endless debates about what should be on or off the list, or what is now more important than it used to be? I am worried about the loss of focus. The Bill has one specific purpose. All of the matters listed are both a means to achieving that end and worth while in their own right. I am not sure what value is added by picking a subset of them—or others—and statutorily targeting them in a child poverty Bill, rather than focusing on one specific goal for which we want to hold the Government to account.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The hon. Gentleman said that the Bill is extremely focused. It is focused on the incomes of families in which children live. The question is whether that policy could lead to bad outcomes. Will it lead to the allocation of resources to fulfil precisely that aim? Perhaps, as I think he said, the Government of the day would say they had tackled child poverty effectively by maintaining people instead of helping them into work, altering their housing circumstances and ensuring that they got better schooling. If they just stick the benefits level up high enough to ensure a statistical, theoretical removal from poverty, that will leave people stuck there. That concern is at the heart of the amendment.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

With respect, that point is at the heart of the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, but it is the opposite to what is at the heart of the amendment and the new clause. The amendment and new clause would do a lot more of the kind of stuff that he mentions, because they would add more targets. I take his point that the focus in the Bill is too narrow. My view is that there is a risk of downplaying income poverty. In her evidence Edna Speed described it not as absolute poverty but as abject poverty. What is good about the measures in the Bill is that they are not just about a line on a graph showing equivalent household income: we have measures on persistent poverty and material deprivation.

The list in the “households below average income” statistics of what counts as material deprivation is not just about lines on a graph. It covers whether a child can go on holiday, have a new pair of shoes, and have a hobby. It is already a broader concept than the hon. Gentleman perhaps suggests. I risk repeating myself, but my key concern is about whether this focused Bill could be even more focused. The amendment risks diluting it, albeit in a well-meaning way. The matters listed should be ends in themselves, and will form part of any child poverty strategy anyway. I am not sure that we gain focus by adding them to the Bill.

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

I agree that the amendment and the new clause would create a much less focused Bill. Some of the items in the new clause are slightly curious. For example, it asks for

“regulations setting out the causes of poverty targets”,

and one of those causes is “serious personal debt”. Surely it is the fact that a person is poor that causes them to have serious personal debt, rather than the other way round.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Obviously, I recognise that there is some truth in what the hon. Lady says, but I have spent quite a lot of time recently with various debt counselling organisations across the country that help families who are in poverty and have very serious debt, and there is a particular characteristic of serious personal debt that aggravates poverty and can keep people in poverty in a particularly unattractive way. There is a separate facet of the debate relating to debt.

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

The hon. Gentleman’s comments show the complexity and the difficulty of adding extra targets in the way that the new clause does. I could give another 40 targets, but if I did, I would be accused of being target-mad. We all know that we have moved between having too many targets and having too few. As my hon. Friend the Member for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North, pointed out, the danger is that by focusing solely on those at the bottom of the pile with multiple deprivation, we ignore 2 million—perhaps even more—of the 2.9 million people in poverty. The Bill attempts to focus us on the broader sweep of those in poverty.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a danger of us almost psychologically profiling the poor? That is something that I have heard Opposition Members almost do, and that issue is coming through very strongly again this morning. Is it not true that people who are on low incomes have as wide a range of characteristics as people who are on medium and high incomes? Is it not true that they are no more than just as likely to have the flaws of drinking too much alcohol, taking drugs or being in debt, but do not have the income to give them resilience? That is a separate but equally serious problem in the approach taken on poverty by Opposition Members.

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

I agree. In the questioning session I specifically referred to many of my constituents who, if given additional income, do not have those other problems and are perfectly able to cope with their lives. Their sole problem is a lack of income. That in no way denigrates the really serious problem faced by a certain proportion of our population, and nobody downplays the importance of any of the items in the new clause.

When I quizzed the witnesses, there were contradictions in their answers. When I asked about targets, Neil O’Brien said:

“I think that you want a broader range of targets and you do not want to privilege a few of them over others. So you want, in a sense, to be neutral between the different types of approaches to challenging child poverty”.

He had asked for targets, but he also said that he did not want to privilege a few of them. If we list some of them in regulations in the detailed way that is proposed, that is precisely what we will do. Donald Hirsch said:

“the key thing is to...create a commission with some clout and some teeth, and one that provides a sort of discipline...The risk of having lots and lots of targets is that they duplicate targets elsewhere and also that each one of those targets itself becomes a potentially distorting measure.”—[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 116-17, Q34-35.]

The amendment does not take account of the Bill’s structure, which is a good structure, and we need to take equal account of the provisions in clauses 1 and 8. Clause 8 specifically asks for a strategy that is not just about the four income targets but about ensuring that children do not experience socio-economic disadvantage. That clause sets out the broad headings, such as education, financial support, social services and employment, under which a number of those targets would be set. We cannot have a Bill that encourages a Secretary of State to set out a whole load of targets that might conflict with what Ministers are doing in relation to their own departmental interests. That would be confusing. While nobody denies that the items in subsection (2)(a) to (h) of proposed new clause 3 are important, they would end up creating a muddle. I am surprised that a party that has gone on at the Labour Government for having too many targets now seeks to introduce a whole load of new ones. That is a slightly surprising contradiction in its position. The amendment does not add to the Bill, and we should oppose it.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

One of the difficulties that I have with the Bill—I will, no doubt, wish to return to the subject later in our deliberations—is the disjuncture that there seems to be between the theory and the high-level aspects of the Bill on the one hand, and its implementation on the other, particularly with regard to how it hands over implementation to local government. I make no apology for bringing the issue back to local government, because that is a way of delivering the Bill. I would like there to be much more acknowledgment of the fact that delivery of what the Bill and all of us seek to achieve will happen only if there is a true partnership between central and local government, and that starts at the top, with the targets. I have listened carefully to the comments that have been made, some of which have been surprising. The hon. Member for Northavon questioned the desirability of updating the targets, and also questioned how we would deal with a whole range of them. I have to tell him that that is how the Government have imposed the mechanism of governance on local government activities across the board. They are always updating targets—until recently a huge number—and are extremely adept at putting them into baskets of targets that they can manage, monitor and change dynamically.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Does the hon. Gentleman think that that is a happy precedent?

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

To be fair, there are pros and cons. The cons are that if the process gets too onerous, it creates more of a bureaucratic structure for the management of the operation, but on the other hand it provides flexibility to react to situations and, particularly on a basket basis, the ability to keep the majority of the targets that one wants and alter those on the periphery. My experience is that there are pros and cons, and I want to return to that issue in a second.

There is already a bit of schizophrenia—if I may use that expression—on the Government’s part as to whether the targets should go broader than the four income targets. I thought that during the evidence sessions there was some recognition, however grudging, by Ministers that the targets needed to be broader. To a certain extent, the reference to material deprivation in the second of those targets is an indication that Government thinking has needed to acknowledge the broader base. The problem with the material deprivation aspect is that it maintains the issue of addressing symptom rather than cause, and we heard in the evidence sessions that the material deprivation target itself did not achieve the wider range of measurements that was needed to take into account the causes of poverty. I refer to the question to which Neil O’Brien replied:

“The bad thing in the Bill...is the narrowness of the legally binding targets...That...drives you relentlessly towards downstream intervention to give people income, rather than upstream intervention to tackle the causes.”

That is also picked up in Mike Brewer’s answer to another question, in which he wished

“that there were a broader range of indicators and perhaps some that related directly to children’s well-being”.——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 101-04, Q199-203.]

Although there were different opinions from some of the witnesses, I got the impression that there was consensus from those whom we saw that there needed to be broader recognition.

Let me return to the local government point from two additional aspects. First, as I said in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire, local government ought to tackle child poverty with regard to the sort of issues that are outlined in the new clause. If we are to have that partnership, there needs to be a recognition, up front, that that is how they are tackling it, rather than on an income basis alone. In many ways that argument has been played out in many of our councils across the country in the run-up to setting their own targets. The issue comes back to the fact that some councils have chosen to adopt the overarching indicator 116 and some have chosen to adopt other indicators.

The argument, philosophically, is exactly the same. For those that chose not to opt for the overarching indicators, the argument was that they needed a broader set of indicators, which were more based on the outcomes that they wanted to achieve in that particular locale. There is strong evidence for trying, right at the beginning, to set the tone for a much broader partnership in order to achieve what we want to achieve in the Bill.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I bid you a warm welcome to the Chair of our Committee, Mr. Key; I look forward to the debates ahead. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire helpfully prompted an interesting debate, which has taken us to the heart of the question, “What is the Bill for?” I entirely accept that the amendments are well meaning, as the hon. Member for Northavon said, but if agreed to they would detract from the Bill’s clarity of purpose, as others said.

The opening debate is a good opportunity for that clarity to be achieved. We can be straightforward: the Bill is about tackling poverty—income poverty and material deprivation. Our aim is that children in the UK should not live in poverty, so the Bill deliberately has a tight focus on income and material deprivation. The reason for that is the evidence of poverty’s impact on children’s lives—on their experiences now and on their chances for the future. The evidence is clear and is set out in some of the documents to which the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire drew attention. Poverty blights children’s lives: it impacts on their education, health, social lives, relationships with their parents—sometimes on the relationship between parents—and future life chances.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

In the light of what the Minister has just said about income poverty, can he explain why over the past three years the Government have not increased the level of tax credits necessary to meet their 2010 child poverty target?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

Of course, we have increased tax credits consistently over the past three years. The 2010 target is going to be difficult to hit, as we discussed in Committee last week. However, we have made a great deal of progress in reducing child poverty: we have reduced the figure by 500,000 according to the most recent data, and we have agreed and legislated for measures that we anticipate will lift another 500,000 children above the poverty line. That is very substantial progress, particularly when compared with what happened between 1979 and 1997, when the level of child poverty in the UK more than doubled to become the highest in Europe. That was a disgrace. We have not only arrested that trend but reversed it—I hope decisively. I welcome the fact that on Second Reading there was unanimous support for the Bill across the House, which reflects the recognition—in contrast with the view taken in the past—that poverty is a blight on the lives of children and on the country that needs to be addressed.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Will the Minister give way?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

Let me make a couple more points and then I shall gladly give way to the hon. Gentleman. I want to comment on what he said. I sensed from his remarks that he was arguing that income poverty may not be that important, and there are other things that may be important. Of course there are other important things, but the key to the Bill is the conviction that income poverty—living below the poverty line—for children should end. That strong conviction drives the Bill, and I hope the hon. Gentleman accepts that.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The Minister is right to say that income poverty is a blight. Those outside the House will find it extraordinary that the Government oppose an amendment that would ensure that such a Bill puts the causes of child poverty—the broad basket of issues that successive Governments have signally failed to tackle—at its heart. Instead the Government fixate on income only, and thus do not ensure that the broader range of issues is tackled. The amendment would at least ensure that the causes of poverty are at the heart of the Bill—not just the quick fix that the Government are not even prepared to employ for next year’s target of more tax credits.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

People listening to and reading the debate will be much more likely to agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Amber Valley and for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North: poverty is an overriding concern. As others have said, it is right for the Bill to focus tightly on that concern, rather than on lots of things. The amendment suggests that instead, the Bill should cover a wider range of policy areas and set targets through regulations on a wide range of outcomes relating to child poverty. It is true that they relate to child poverty; they are not irrelevant or unrelated and it is important to tackle them. Indeed, there are Government proposals and measures in place to tackle them, and there are targets, but we should not have targets in the Bill. That would water down the bright spotlight on poverty, which is the Bill’s great strength.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

I am slightly confused by that argument. The Minister has already admitted that the Bill contains not just income targets but targets relating to material deprivation, so surely that already widens the Bill. The problem is the evidence given by Neil O’Brien that the material deprivation data are not solid. Why have an imperfect definition outside the income ranges for those targets when we could have a better one?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

As others have said, there is not a single number that tells us about poverty. That is why we have taken the view, which has been widely supported by those who have looked at this issue, that there should be four measures, all four of which I would defend. The hon. Member for Northavon indicated that he will take a contrary view on at least one of them. All four measures are about poverty, how much income people have, how much they are able to buy and whether they suffer from material deprivation. That focus is clear. I will resist suggestions that we ought to water that down by looking at a load of other things as well.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

Will the Minister give way?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

Let me make one more point on this issue. I am not sure that the amendments would result in a broad strategy to tackle child poverty, as has been argued. The target should cover our ultimate goal—the outcome that we seek to achieve—not the range of policies and other topics likely to be addressed as part of an effective strategy.

The strategy needs to be multifaceted if we are to end child poverty, but specifying targets, and specifying measures for a range of policy areas, would reduce its effectiveness and result potentially in a focus on those eight areas, rather than other things which equally need to be addressed. It is a pretty selective list. A much better approach would be to ask, what are we trying to achieve? We are attempting to achieve the eradication of child poverty. That will be our target.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Will the Minister give way on that point?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I will give way first to the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

The Minister is generous, as ever. I seek clarity on his approach to tackling child poverty. It seems that there was a stage when the Government argued that the way to reduce child poverty was simply through better benefits and tax credits and such transfers of resources. In recent years the Government’s emphasis has been more on tackling what we consider the long-term causes of poverty. It is not clear from what the Minister has said today quite where he stands. Does he believe essentially that the child poverty target set out in the Bill will be met by transfers of resources, such as tax credits and child benefit? Or does he believe it is about addressing what we would consider the causes of poverty? What is his position?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

It will need to be both. Given the substantial investment in education, child care, Sure Start centres and other public services over the past 10 years, we will benefit in the coming decade more than in the past, simply because that investment and those services are now in place. Some of the children who benefited from that investment will have their own children by 2020.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

On exactly that point, we have not seen the reduction in the number of NEETs for which we would have hoped from measures such as Sure Start centres. Let us assume hypothetically that over the coming years we see a big reduction in the number of children leaving primary school unable to read or count properly, from the current scandalous level of one in five to a much lower level. Let us assume that over the coming years, we see a massive reduction in teenage pregnancies and other causes that help to put people into poverty. Let us say that we are making enormous progress in a way that we have not over the past 10 years. Would the Minister really want to see us take funding from those successful programmes in order to increase benefits, when we were making progress on the root causes of poverty that have made Britain the most miserable place in which a child can be brought up?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

We have, of course, seen significant improvements in education standards in primary schools. Many more young people leaving primary and secondary school are achieving—

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

That is hotly disputed.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I do not think it is hotly disputed. The evidence is actually very clear. We have seen substantial gains, including progress in reducing the incidence of teenage pregnancy.

The child poverty strategy will set out the specific actions that need to be taken. The development of the strategy will identify those groups of children most at risk of being in poverty, including particularly vulnerable groups, and the underlying causes of poverty: the kind of things set out in the amendments. Annual reports will enable us to monitor progress, tracking a wide range of indicators. I imagine those indicators are likely to change, as circumstances change over the coming decade. The ultimate goal— the end of child poverty—will be unchanged. It is right that that should be at the heart of the Bill.

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire mentioned the publication of “Opportunity for all”. The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland wrote to Members of the Committee late yesterday about that, to set out that the Department for Work and Pensions is considering what form in which to continue publishing that information. The data are included in other documents, such as annual departmental reports, reports on public service agreements and so on. My hon. Friend is considering the issue at the moment, recognising the interest that there is and has been in “Opportunity for all”.

The Bill requires all four of the targets to be met. The hon. Member for Northavon said that perhaps in 10 years’ time someone would say, “We’ve done two of them, that’s not too bad”, but the terms of the Bill are clear—all four targets need to be hit.

I hope that the Committee will accept that it is right for the Bill to have the tight focus on poverty—no ifs and no buts—and that the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire will withdraw the amendment.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken. We have had a wide-ranging and important debate on the amendment and new clause. Let me scotch the idea straight away that the amendment constitutes some sort of Conservative get-out, to water down the Bill, as the Minister said, or to let the Government off the hook, as the hon. Member for Northavon said. It is nothing of the kind. Clauses 2 to 5 remain in the Bill—they have not been amended and Conservative Members have not proposed to take them out. Our attempt is purely to get appropriate targets—the right targets—in the Bill, so that we drive policy in the right direction and get the correct balance between symptoms and causes.

The principle definition that we use is shifting people from below 60 per cent. of median income to just above. An analogy that I often use is that if one of us were to knock on the door of a home in our constituency and find a family in which income had moved from 58 per cent. of median to 61 per cent., Ministers would claim that that was a family taken out of poverty. They would be correct in a purely statistical sense—that is what would have been achieved according to the Government terms. However, if we sat down and spent some time with that family, we would probably be told that, yes, they did have a bit more money, which was important and for which they were grateful, but that the deep-seated problems that led to ongoing difficulties in their lives were still there. New clause 3 and amendment 59 try to deal with the issue.

To make a further point to the Minister, in 1987 the rate of child poverty was 23 per cent., as it was in 2007, the last year for which we have figures. Over a 20-year period the rate has not shifted much, so it is time for a new approach. I shall seek to divide the Committee on amendment 59.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I beg to move amendment 21, in clause 1, page 1, line 11, at end insert—

‘(3) The Secretary of State shall also ensure that interim targets for child poverty are met in relation to the United Kingdom in the financial year beginning with 1 April 2015, where such interim targets are specified by the Child Poverty Commission.’.

The amendment seeks to put into the Bill an interim target, which is halfway between now and the target date or, alternatively, three-quarters of the way from when the promise was first made about 10 years ago. Given the length of our previous debate, I shall endeavour both to be brief and to encompass any remarks that I might otherwise have made on a clause stand part debate, which may be a position shared across the Committee.

On the 2015 targets and why we might want them, one of the worries about where we are in 2009-10 is the economic situation. We will be going through a difficult five-year period, when the public finances will be in a mess and we may even have legislation to put them on an even keel, so it will be hard to make much progress in the next five years, frankly. When there was, on the face of it, plenty of spare Government cash—we can debate whether there was—it was relatively straightforward, when the economy was growing rapidly and things looked good, to find money to boost tax credits. Even in those halcyon days, as they now seem, we could not meet the targets.

We missed the five-year target and we missed the 10-year target by more, so it is not hard to see that the next five years will be more difficult than the preceding 10 and, therefore, pro rata we will miss the 15-year benchmark by even more. One option says, “Well, that doesn’t matter because the only number that matters is 2020. We’re going to have rolling reports and the child poverty commission will tell us how we are getting on and there will be pressure to keep on track, so we don’t need to worry.” It is true, obviously, that we have not had a child poverty commission for the past 10 years, so we have not had that external discipline. The worry is that the momentum, such as we have had bearing in mind that child poverty has risen for the past two years, will be lost irreparably in the next five years.

We may get to 2015 even further behind schedule and it will have become impossible to hit the 2020 target. At that point, the legitimate concern about the Bill as a whole becomes relevant: if we do not have the interim target to keep us on track, we run the risk of running round pulling the only lever available to us, which is income transfer. In a sense, that is a comment for a stand part debate. One reason for a 2015 target is to say, “We need to act now to deliver in 2015”, so we do not get to 2015, miss the target, have no enforcement mechanism and realise that the only thing that we can do is rely on cash transfers, which, although a very important part of the mix, are clearly not the whole story. We have just had that debate.

The 2015 target is a valuable interim target. The Minister may say that the Secretary of State will give us three-year strategies reflecting on progress to date, and the child poverty commission will tell us, advise us and do all the rest. That would have some force if we felt that the child poverty commission had real clout. Obviously, we will debate in greater detail the clout of the child poverty commission, but it is relevant here because I am concerned that it is a weak institution compared with other analogous bodies, such as the Low Pay Commission—the minimum wage recommendations of which Governments have great difficulty ignoring—and the Committee on Climate Change, which has had a huge influence already and even before it existed had a huge influence in shadow form. The child poverty commission will be 14 people meeting four times a year, plus two members of staff and a hired meeting room. That is it. The idea that it will hold a Government to account for what the regulatory impact assessment says is £400 billion of spending over 10 years is implausible. We need a body with more teeth.

The amendment gives us a binding interim target. What that should be is clearly a separate question. There is an argument that it should not be half the distance between here and there, because some investments are longer term and will yield fruits later in the decade, but we need to be explicit and transparent. That argument could become a great get-out clause for the next Government, who could say, “We’ve sown all the seeds but you will not see the fruit till 2018 or 2019, so don’t worry about the fact that we are miles away from our target in 2015, it’ll be okay.” If we can do all those things by 2020 but they will not flower by 2015, let us be explicit, transparent and accountable.

To sum up, we have not had a statutory target hitherto. The Bill gives us one at the end of the period, but we will not know if that has been achieved until 2022 or some time, so the worry is that we have no real toothy accountability.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

For those who support this approach to tackling child poverty, I can see the logic of having an interim target. However, the hon. Gentleman keeps talking about teeth and enforcement mechanisms. As far as I can see, as a sceptic and cynic on the matter, it will simply show that the child poverty commission can do nothing and that the Government will fail. If they do fail on an interim target, what teeth does he propose?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

The Bill itself is the teeth. It would be a breach of a statutory duty if the 2015 target is not met, and the legal remedy that will apply in 2020—judicial review—would apply in 2015.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

The hon. Gentleman makes a very strong case. He raises the concern that without an interim target we will get to 2018 and will have to pull the only lever available, which is income transfers. What is to prevent us, if his amendment is accepted, from finding ourselves in that position in 2014? Given the problems we are likely to face over the next five years with the state of the public finances, will we not find in 2014 that we are in exactly the position that he is trying to avoid in 2018-19?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

The straight answer to that is that I have a feeling this is a lever that will need pulling long and hard and consistently. It is difficult to see how we can deliver on 2015 without significant action on tax credits and benefit levels. We will not achieve these goals in 2020 if we lose momentum on that very specific point. Clearly the strategy has to be a mixture of transfers and tackling the causes in the longer term, but my worry is that without this interim target, the whole defence will be that everything is long term and investment. The argument will be that although there are no such signs and child poverty may even have risen, we should not worry because all this stuff has been done for the long term.

My argument essentially is that we are not going to deliver on 2020 without significant action on income transfers, which is one of the shorter-term things we need to do. If we allow the real value, relative to 60 per cent. of median income, of tax credits and benefits to fall back, which is a real danger, we may as well kiss goodbye to 2020. In a sense, part of 2015 is keeping the momentum and pressure up and not taking our foot off the gas. That is essentially where we are coming from. The amendment is straightforward and transparent. It tries to make sure that we hit 2020. It reinforces what the Government are trying to do by making sure we do not take our foot off the gas, and by being transparent. If we think the profile is going to be other than even to 2020, it requires Governments to say why and to do something about it.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

As the hon. Member for Northavon said, we can be briefer in this debate. I understand the logic of what he proposes. We have had five-yearly targets and milestones, as the Minister described them last week, since the original 1999 pledge. We have 2005 and 2010. It would therefore seem logical to have another five-year sequence. However, I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to clause 13, under which annual reports will be made to Parliament by the Secretary of State concerning all the relevant progress that has been made in meeting the targets in clauses 2 to 5. I expect those to be fairly robust occasions on which the Government will be challenged. The child poverty lobby groups will not miss those opportunities to be vociferous about what they would like to see done to meet the ultimate 2020 target. I am reassured by what is in the Bill, because in this new environment we will have the annual report from the Secretary of State, which will put us in a different situation from the present one.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

The hon. Member for Northavon made an important point about the need to scrutinise progress rigorously and to make sure we are on track to meet our 2020 targets, but much of what I will say has been anticipated in his remarks and those of the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire.

Clause 8 requires the Secretary of State to publish a strategy every three years, to set out the progress intended over that three-year period in each of the policy areas specified in subsection (5), and to describe the progress needed over that period to meet the 2020 targets. In that way, the strategy will set milestones to 2020. Clause 8(1) sets out that the first child poverty strategy needs to be published within a year of Royal Assent of the Bill.

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire rightly pointed out that clause 13 requires the Secretary of State to publish annual progress reports. They will show progress towards the milestones set out in the strategy, and towards the strategy’s aims. Clause 13(5) requires that when a strategy is not fully implemented, the annual report must describe the respects in which it has not been implemented and give the reasons why. There will, therefore, be a high degree of accountability for progress towards 2020.

The process of setting milestones needs to be linked to the strategy. If we set interim milestones in isolation from the strategy, that would be inconsistent with our approach. For example, the strategy ought to focus, first, on the longest acting policy levers, and the hon. Member for Northavon accepted that that would not give a linear trajectory on income to 2020. Alternatively, the strategy could focus on those with the greatest need, which would not give a linear trajectory either. It is important, as was reflected on Second Reading, that accountability for setting targets and monitoring progress remain with Ministers answerable to Parliament. The commission, through its advice on the development of the strategy, will inform the interim milestones set out in the strategy. We are keen to ensure that the Bill requires proper scrutiny and proper accountability for progress, which is already provided through what is set out on the strategy and annual reports. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Member for Northavon does not press his amendment.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Both the Minister and the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire have a touching faith in the power of annual reports to Parliament. I suspect that there are hundreds if not thousands of such reports by all manner of Government bodies, all of which we scrutinise thoroughly, all of which regularly occupy the front pages of our newspapers and all of which we are regularly asked about on the doorstep and held to account for—not. I suspect that this would be just another annual report from just another body.

We all know how difficult it is to get the media interested in poverty. When poverty is debated in the House a set of us are there, but we are not a majority. Poverty is not a subject that gets the pulses of the majority racing, and I fear that if we do not put some real teeth into this, it will just be yet another report that Parliament nods at: perhaps there will be a bit of a flurry for three hours in a desultory session in Westminster Hall, and then the world moves on. British children deserve rather better than that. To be fair to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, I can understand why a party that aspires to be in government between 2010 and 2015 does not want tough targets for 2015; if I were in his position, I am sure I would say exactly the same.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I take it from that that the hon. Gentleman’s party does not aspire to be in government in that period.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

On the contrary, we aspire not only to be in government but to be held to account for those targets.

The Minister says that the trajectory is non-linear. I am sure he is right—reverse, in fact, is the current gear. He is probably right that if the targets were to be deliverable they would not be deliverable in a straight line. It would be good if the Government were—not even forced by my amendment—to be explicit about how much progress they think is likely by halfway through, and about the balance between short and long-term measures. The amendment would have forced that, but I will not pursue it. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 2

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I beg to move amendment 22, in clause 2, page 1, line 13, leave out ‘10’ and insert ‘5’.

We now move to targets and start with the relative low income target, which for a long time has been an internationally standard definition of poverty. There are always arguments concerning the principle that, as the economy grows so the poverty line rises, but in my view the poverty line should rise when economies grow. If the living standards of the majority are going up, then what it means to be poor goes up. If everyone in the class but us can go on a trip, or everyone in the class but us can afford the latest trainers for their children, that is a moving target and it should be a moving target. The fact is that the relative income target under clause 2 is entirely welcome and allows for international comparisons.

Then comes the question of how many children should be below the target. Ideally it would be nil, but in reality children will be living in households below 60 per cent. of the median. The day after a person loses his job, the chances are that he will be below the poverty line. That might be transient, and we will come to other measures that try to pick that up, but at any point there will be a frictional level of poverty in unemployment terms. How low is frictional? The purpose of our amendment is to point out that 10 per cent. is unduly unambitious, especially for a Bill whose long title states:

“Set targets relating to the eradication of child poverty”.

At Prime Minister’s Question Time a week or two back, the Prime Minister referred to eradication of child poverty. It was an entirely unqualified phrase and anyone hearing him would have assumed that child poverty would be eradicated. They might be rather surprised to discover from the Bill that a million children in child poverty would count as eradication. My mental arithmetic is not great, but I reckon that about 1,500 children in each constituency living in poverty would be described as eradication. I accept that 5 per cent. is not eradication either, but we must recognise that there will always be some transient child poverty, so if we are to use such language—as the Government clearly are—we need to be as close as possible to what the public will understand us to mean.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

In support of the hon. Gentleman’s point, the “Oxford English Dictionary” says that “eradicate” means to eliminate completely. Therefore, it is absolutely inappropriate for the Prime Minister or other Ministers to say that the Bill will eradicate child poverty when clearly, as it is now constituted, it will not.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was wondering whether to amend the long title to “Set targets relating to the substantial reduction of”, but I might split an infinitive and I do not want to do that.

If the figure is not to be 10 per cent., what should it be? We have often asked ourselves what was in Tony Blair’s mind when he suggested that he wanted to abolish child poverty. As was famously said when somebody died, what did he mean by that? At the time when he made his pledge, countries in Europe had much lower rates of child poverty. I pray in aid Finland—as the Minister might expect me to do—because for the years 1996, 1997 and 1998, it had a child poverty rate of 5 per cent. It is indeed true that no country in the European Union now has a 5 per cent. child poverty rate. The rate in Finland has doubled to 10 per cent. and the United Kingdom figure for 2007 was a shameful 23 per cent.

Clearly, getting the figure down to 10 per cent. would be huge progress and entirely laudable, but it would certainly not be eradication and nor is it as bold as we should wish to be. The Government said that they chose the figure of 10 per cent. because that was about as good as they could get, and it is the lowest sustainable level that modern European countries could achieve. However, the Finnish figures of 5 per cent., 5 per cent., 5 per cent., 7 per cent., and 6 per cent. for a five-year period were much lower. Surely, if we are to set a target for 2020, which in a political context is a long-term target, we should be bold. We should not plan for failure, but I would rather narrowly miss a 5 per cent. child poverty target than comfortably hit a 10 per cent. target.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I agree in general with the hon. Gentleman’s point, but, given our discussion and understanding of the perverse outcomes of the Bill, as constituted, I am surprised that he has not tabled an amendment that would set 5 per cent. for 2030. The focus would be on aiming to reduce over time, but, absolutely, staying on the deep-rooted causes as well as the immediate financial issue, whoever was in Government.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

If the Minister’s response was, “All right, we’ll take 5 per cent., but we’ll do it in 2030”, I would probably accept and be happy with that. However, the question then is how quickly we can tackle that.

It is worth reflecting on how quickly the numbers went up. We have had a staggering rewriting of history by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, who conveniently chooses 1987 as a base year. On another measure, child poverty rose from 1.7 million in 1979 to 3.4 million in 1997—to pick a year at random—so 1.7 million children were added to child poverty in 18 years. The Government target is just over 1 million, so we would be trying to take slightly more than that number out in the following 13 or so years—essentially bringing the rate down about as fast as it rose, which is a challenge.

Five per cent. may be a better target for further on, although one of the problems with child poverty targets is that we have whole generations going through. If we do not hit 5 per cent. by 2020, the children of 2020 will—strangely—be 10 years older by 2030 and their whole childhood will have been affected. As I said, we do not want to legislate for failure, but the political imperative of a 5 per cent. target is very different from a 10 per cent. target. A 10 per cent. target would require some serious effort, but a 5 per cent. target would make for a real hands-on, headline-grabbing target for Government—every Minister would be called in and asked, “What are you doing about it?” That target would seize Government as an objective far more, because it is so demanding.

The level of child poverty is shocking—that is why we have the Bill that we have. It is true that no one else is doing much—I see that the Danes were on 9 per cent in 2007, so it is possible even in the present circumstances to reach such figures. However, with a 10-year run at it, it ought to be possible to be much more ambitious. I commend the amendment to the Committee.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I understand where the hon. Gentleman is coming from with his amendment. I am completely with him on what he and my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness properly pointed out: eradication does not equal 10 per cent. A more honest long title for the Bill would refer to a substantial reduction or to moving UK child poverty levels to the best currently achievable in Europe, which is clearly what the Government seek to do. The Government are stuck with “eradication”—they have kept the word, which has entered the public consciousness, and moved the target. I have the brief from the End Child Poverty campaign, which talks about 1.3 million children who could be left in relative income poverty in 2010—the hon. Member for Northavon mentioned 1 million.

That said, I do not support the amendment for a number of reasons. I remember a debate in Westminster Hall on such issues some years ago, when my parliamentary neighbour, a Labour MP, the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins), said that it was a nonsense to talk about eradication and that if the United Kingdom had a target to achieve the best levels of child poverty, or the lowest levels that were achievable in Europe, that would be more honest and something that we could genuinely aim for.

The hon. Member for Northavon quoted some statistics. I shall quote a few, briefly, from the Government document, “Ending child poverty: making it happen”. At the moment the best level of child poverty in Europe is in Denmark, at 10 per cent., the next best being Finland on 11 per cent.—a large rise from the figures that the hon. Gentleman was talking about. Those figures were from 2007. If we go back two years to 2005, the best rate achieved anywhere in Europe was in Sweden, at a rate of 9 per cent. If we go back to 2001, we have two countries, Denmark and Sweden, achieving 7 per cent., which is a little nearer the hon. Gentleman’s 5 per cent. The plain facts of the matter are that in both 2005 and 2007, the best figure in Europe was around 9, 10 or 11 per cent.

I have my own personal philosophy in politics—one can be attacked both ways. One can be attacked for not being sufficiently ambitious and for being apparently satisfied with leaving 1.3 million children in poverty, which I do not believe a single member of the Committee would be. Alternatively, one can adopt another philosophy, which is my own as far as politics is concerned, to try to under-promise and over-deliver. I say to the hon. Member for Northavon that there are a number of reasons why politicians are held in low regard by members of the public, including the fact that sometimes our promises and aspirations are very big—perhaps a bit too big—and we fail in their delivery. I would rather take a more cautious approach. We would cut the current rate of 23 per cent. by more than half if we got to 10 per cent. That would not be good enough—of course I would like to go further. However, if we are putting something in law, there is merit in the Government’s approach of saying, “Let’s try to achieve the best levels that are currently achievable in Europe”, notwithstanding that every single member of the Committee would like to go further and make sure that no children are left in relative income poverty.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

What we want in the Bill are targets for child poverty that are ambitious but realistic, and clause 2 defines the target that less than 10 per cent. of children will be living in relative low-income poverty. Under the Bill, that target must be met by 2020, but it must be maintained beyond that date, rather than being a momentary effect in 2020. We want it to be sustained permanently, and schedule 2 sets out that aim. That is a very stretching target, but it is one that international evidence suggests can be achieved. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire is right that 10 per cent. would be a dramatic improvement on what we have seen in the UK for a long time. It would be the lowest achieved in the UK since records began in 1961.

The comparison with other European countries is very telling. The hon. Member for Northavon was right about Finland achieving 5 per cent. in 1996, 1997 and 1998, but, as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire pointed out, at the moment, the level of child poverty in Finland is above 10 per cent., so the evidence suggests that, while one can sometimes achieve 5 per cent., that figure has not been sustained over time and we need a target that can be sustained.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I hope that I can make an intervention that helps the Minister’s argument. We heard from the Institute for Fiscal Studies in the evidence sessions that its estimate on the basis of current policies was that by 2020, if nothing changed, the relative child poverty level would again be above 3 million. Does the Minister accept that projection?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I have seen something along those lines from the IFS. It is certainly right that with the way the world economy has been in recent years, and probably will be for a while yet, the natural tendency if one does nothing is for the numbers to go up. Holding it steady requires action. Reducing it on the scale at which we are aiming requires substantial action, hence the importance of the Bill. Echoing what the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire said, and according to the most recent data that I have seen, Denmark is the only European country where child poverty is as low as 10 per cent. In other Scandinavian countries and elsewhere in Europe, it is higher.

Alongside the relative low-income target that we are discussing, there are targets for absolute low income, combined low income, material deprivation and persistent poverty. By setting four targets, we are recognising the need for a comprehensive and challenging definition of success and the need to measure progress and drive action against different facets of poverty. The duty to meet the targets is absolute, and the only way to change them would be to repeal the legislation.

The problem with the amendment is that it fails the credibility test, as the hon. Member for Northavon probably recognises. In questioning me in the evidence session a week ago, he expressed scepticism about the achievability of a target of 10 per cent. I do not know whether it was for rhetorical effect, but it was the view that he expressed. Given that scepticism, it is difficult to see how he supports making the target twice as demanding, as he does in his amendment.

We want a tough target—that is absolutely right—but not an impossible one, as that is useless. If we go into this with everyone saying that the target is impossible and that no country in Europe has ever managed to reach it, it will be a much less effective target than one we can argue is achievable. All of us want the legislation to work, and on that basis, I hope that the hon. Member will withdraw his amendment.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I like to think that politics is the art of the possible. What people are despondent about regarding their politicians is the opposite of what the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire said: the paucity of vision; the fact that we do not dream dreams that are exciting and motivating; the fact that we are all a shade of vanilla; the suggestion that we should have cautious targets and not go too far, but rather over-deliver, under-promise and go to the electorate with a slightly cagey approach because they have been let down so often in the past.

What this sort of amendment would achieve is a bold vision. The Minister said that it has not been done before, which obviously people said when man had not been on the Moon. What about a bit of vision? What about a bit of boldness? Many people will find puzzling the idea that it is not possible to sustain “only” 650,000 children in poverty in this country, that it is an unattainable and unrealistic dream and that we cannot legislate on that basis. Just to accept that there must always be two thirds of a million children in poverty seems a bit disappointing, to say the least.

However, I do not sense a groundswell of support in the Committee, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 3

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I beg to move amendment 17, in clause 3, page 2, line 5, at end insert ‘, and

(c) experience bad housing conditions.’.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 18, in clause 3, page 2, line 12, at end add—

‘(4) Regulations must specify the circumstances in which a child is to be regarded for the purposes of subsection (1) (c) as experiencing bad housing conditions.’.

Amendment 19, in clause 3, page 2, line 12, at end add—

‘(4) Regulations must specify the circumstances in which a child is to be regarded for the purposes of subsection (1) (b) as experiencing material deprivation in relation to housing.’.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

It is a great pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr. Key. I start by congratulating the Ministers in charge of the Bill, because it is the first time that there have been specific requirements for housing for children. I recognise that, and pay a great tribute to them.

One of my purposes in tabling the amendments is to beef up the provision: to take it from what I call the undergrowth that lies behind the Bill and put it on the face of the Bill. I would also like some reassurance from Ministers about what the intentions are and how the provisions on material deprivation should be treated if, in future years, there are efforts to use such provisions to improve housing for children. Of course, comments made in Committee and recorded in Hansard can be used in legal interpretations in court regarding what should happen to children in bad housing. I am looking for some specific assurances, and I have raised some of these issues with Ministers previously.

One of the reasons why the amendments are necessary is the lack of clarity about exactly what is intended with some of the housing provisions in that undergrowth behind the Bill. Although the list of 21 items that are regarded as contributing to material deprivation contains a number that relate to housing and children, they do not sit very high in the legislative hierarchy. I thought that material deprivation indicators would be in the regulations. However, looking at some of the support papers, there is a policy statement for them. The list of 21 goods and services, which has apparently been used for some time and is cited in the documents, are

“currently being updated...to ensure that the list of items used reflect contemporary standards of living. That is why a statement of policy intent has been provided rather than draft regulations.”

It would be very helpful to have some assurances on that.

Equally, in the needs assessment regulations that are due to come in next year, assuming the legislation is passed, the reference to what local authorities should be doing on housing also seems to be slack, as it mentions an assessment of the role of housing, transport and other services provided by the local authority or partner authorities and the impact that that has on child poverty. That seems to be a very slight reference to implementing something that is very important for child poverty and for children living in poverty. There is no dispute at all about the importance of housing to children and to poor households. There is no dispute at all about the fact that it is absolutely right that housing should be one of the factors listed under material deprivation.

In “Every Child Matters”—the basic document that started a lot of the Government’s reforms on children’s policy—homelessness was listed above unemployment as the prime risk factor for children. It could just as well have been housing conditions, because homeless families live in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and so on. There was a real failure, in the early stages of Every Child Matters, to operationalise the risk factor that homelessness and poor housing created for children. The efforts to do so, by having joint protocols for the local authorities that cater for children—the county councils and the district councils—have not worked and I have tabled amendments so that that can be considered later.

If we look at the concerns about poor housing and its impact on poor children, there is a knock-on effect—for example, children have to have somewhere to do their homework. In the list of priorities, I was surprised that under the items of material deprivation from the child’s point of view, there is nothing about having somewhere to do homework. There is a wonderful provision stating that the child should be able to have

“friends round for tea or a snack once a fortnight.”

For disorganised mothers who work, that is quite a challenge. Obviously, if someone is going to visit like that, the child has to have a home to bring them to. For a lot of poor children today, the material deprivation is compounded by the fact that they simply do not have a home to which they can take a friend back for tea. Housing has to take priority over a number of other factors of material deprivation, which is why I have tabled an amendment stating that that should be in the Bill.

There are other bits of legislation that deal with issues relating to housing; for example, homelessness legislation and the decent homes standard. The commitment in the list of items of material deprivation that I would like to include in the Bill, concerns overcrowding from the child’s point of view. There should be

“enough bedrooms for every child of 10 or over to share their bedroom only with siblings of the same sex.”

That is a wonderful commitment. It would be nice to have that in the Bill, instead of tucked away in a list, the status of which is unclear and which is being revised. That is a whole new standard of overcrowding, which my hon. Friend the Member for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North and I have never seen in any of the discussions that we have had over the years. It is far adrift from the standard picture in other legislation, which is based on the 1935 standards of overcrowding. Civil servants never realise that the definition of overcrowding that they say that local authorities have is an allocation policy; it is not a transfer policy. That affects many families up and down the country. A couple with a baby will be given a one-bedroom flat, but when the baby grows up and the couple have two or three children, they cannot get moved, because there is nothing to say that that family is overcrowded.

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

My hon. Friend has been a champion of this cause for many years. As the representative of a constituency where it is common for families of six to share one bedroom, I accept everything she says. She is right to talk about the complicated standards that apply and the failure to get them on to a proper, consistent footing. Does she agree that the weakness now is that it is impossible to enforce action against landlords, including social landlords, who do not take action to deal with overcrowding, because there are potentially three different standards: the bedroom standard, the 1935 standard and the housing health and safety rating system? All of those apply, which leaves people in a state of chaos as to how to measure and tackle overcrowding.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

That is correct, which is why one of the assurances that I seek is on the precedence that the new standard takes over all the other standards, so that people can be clear about what they are entitled to and what children can expect. Another part of the muddle about standards is that, although we have been successful in campaigning for recognition that regulations should be introduced to improve the 1935 standard, those regulations have never happened, so we are in limbo. I hope that the Minister will clarify the situation.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Like the hon. Member for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North, I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her focus on this important subject. What response has she had from Ministers over the years? In the 13th year of this Labour Government, we still have the 1935 standard. I agree with her that that is disgraceful. What response has she had—not necessarily from Treasury Ministers—to her representations asking for a new standard to guarantee decent housing?

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I was once a Housing Minister and I could not get it changed either. The problem represents a Faustian pact between local authorities and central Government, because overcrowding is probably the most explosive housing issue, as it is the most expensive to resolve. Problems are also increasing: there are about 70,000 more overcrowded families now. After all the pressure, it has been possible to get a commitment to introduce regulations. There have also been some pilot programmes and a survey that showed that the biggest overcrowding problems in any constituency are in the East Ham constituency of my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. It is an extraordinarily difficult problem.

A group of us, including my hon. Friend the Member for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North, have been able to achieve glacial progress, but the biggest progress of all would be if the bedroom standard, which, dare one say, is on the material deprivation wish list, was included in the Bill. That would transform the situation in an extraordinary fashion.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I hope you will allow me to pursue this point, Mr. Key. As a former Housing Minister, the hon. Lady is entirely the appropriate person to ask about the issue. There are two ways of ensuring decent housing for children: one is, as she said, through standards; the other is through house building. As a former Housing Minister, perhaps she can tell us why it is that, during every year of this Labour Government, fewer affordable housing units have been built than in any year of the era of either Mrs. Thatcher or John Major. I am not trying to apportion blame. I am genuinely confused about why so few houses have been built during the past 12 or 13 years.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

Order. I am keen that the debate should not get too wide. However, the hon. Gentleman is in good company because I too was once a Housing Minister, so I am very interested in this.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I should not have mentioned that I was a Housing Minister. One of the problems is that the incentives in the grant system have, until now, encouraged the building of smaller units. That is a big problem because there is simply not a sufficient number of substantial family units at a time when people’s expectations are increasing. Public expectations are exactly in line with what is in the list: if they have children over 10, people expect that they should have a separate bedroom. As well as the numbers, the size of housing units being built is also an issue. That partly relates to the incentives and grant system.

To underline how out of date our standards are, I noted a couple of points made during the 1935 debate, when a Labour MP, Arthur Greenwood said:

“the right hon. Gentleman’s standards as regards overcrowding are not standards which are tolerable in the twentieth century. He contemplates as a normal thing that living rooms should be used as bedrooms. I can never agree to that. I think it is wrong.” —[Official Report, 20 May 1935; Vol. 302, c. 42]

I have always thought it was wrong, and 75 years after that debate, it is still wrong. Later in that debate, Arthur Greenwood stated that the further difficulty is

“unless we insist now that people shall not be required, in ordinary circumstances, to sleep in 44 living rooms, we shall be heading for the creation of new slums.”—[Official Report, 20 May 1935; Vol. 302, c. 51]

On the question of sleeping in kitchens, a Conservative MP, Mr. Crossley, said

“I was worried about kitchens being included...I would like to ask again for reassurance from the Minister that, in districts where people are not accustomed to sleeping in the kitchen, the kitchen will not in fact be included in the number of rooms in the house for the purpose of the survey.” —[Official Report, 20 May 1935; Vol. 302, c. 49]

I will be asking my hon. Friend for the same assurance about people not having to sleep in kitchens.

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

My hon. Friend might be aware of this and have experienced the problem in her constituency. Registered social landlords—housing associations—which are wholly dependent on the Government for grant funding will contest enforcement action against overcrowding cases on the grounds that they should be allowed to insist that members of the family sleep in the kitchen.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I have indeed had plenty of such cases. The only reason why not so many people are required to sleep in kitchens now is because many flats and houses do not have kitchens; instead, they have little kitchenettes and a combined living and dining room. That is the only saving grace that has stopped a lot of families from having to sleep in kitchens.

In the 1935 debate, a Mr. Gordon Macdonald—it does not say to what party he belonged—said

“To suggest to people that because they have an additional child some member of the family should sleep in the kitchen or the living room would be looked upon as treating them very unworthily.” —[Official Report, 20 May 1935; Vol. 302, c. 50]

It is often the case that when our constituents have an extra child, one family member goes to sleep in the sitting room on the sofa or, if the kitchen is big enough, they sleep there. That is how out of date the standards are.

The material deprivation standard in the Bill will transform all that absolutely, which is why it is so important. The Bill will make it possible for children over 10 to have bedrooms of their own. One can understand why that is such a controversial thing to say. My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North is absolutely right to say that the biggest increase in overcrowding is in social rented housing, where the state sets the standards. That is where the biggest problem is. We need to change that, so that the poorest families and children get something better.

I do not want to go on too long, but I have a few questions. In particular, I ask my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to give some commitments, as Hansard is important in interpreting legislation, and what he says can be used in court. First, what is included as a bedroom in the bedroom standard envisaged in the Bill? Until now, a sitting room or a kitchen that was big enough could be a bedroom, which has made it almost impossible for any family to be deemed statutorily overcrowded. As I understand it—perhaps my right hon. Friend will confirm this—the intention behind the proposals is that a bedroom that is de-designated as a bedroom by the people who live in the property cannot be counted as a bedroom. That changes what the family are entitled to.

Let me give an example. I am not trying to test your patience, Mr. Key. We need to give some concrete examples; otherwise, it sounds like we are just having a theoretical debate. I became interested in overcrowding as a result of my first experience as a councillor in London. I had been involved in housing in South Africa, where I had gone around the townships. I had seen plenty of township houses where the kitchen, although big enough to sleep in, was used as a kitchen/dining room, and where there was also a living room and two bedrooms. I ran a housing project that built three bunk beds in one of the bedrooms. With two children in each bed, and the two parents in the other bedroom, a family of six children and two adults could sleep reasonably comfortably in a four-roomed house.

As a councillor in this country, I went into a council flat that was supposed to have three bedrooms. The family comprised six children and two adults. They had retained the one sitting room; they had a kitchenette and they had turned one of the bedrooms into a dining room. When I went into one of the remaining bedrooms, I was astonished to see that there were three bunk beds up the wall, with two children in each one. The parents had the other bedroom.

The council said that the family were not overcrowded, because they could use the dining room as a bedroom, which is what it was meant to be. The family said no, because they had turned it from a bedroom into a dining room. If the family says, perfectly reasonably, that they are de-designating a bedroom and turning it into a second living room because they need the space, will that be regarded as permanent or as a wilful misuse of the space, which is what happened in the case of the family that I met?

Secondly, under the bedroom standard, people are paired off: the married couple is paired off and has one room; children of the same sex over 10 can be paired off and have a bedroom; for the younger children, different arrangements can be made, with those of different genders in one room. Will the pairings be decided by the family? Will the pairing of the couple sharing a bedroom be regarded as permanent? I ask that because if a couple who have a boy and a girl in their early teens and who are living in a one-bedroomed flat with a sitting room tell their housing officer that they do not want their children to share a bedroom, because they are past the age of puberty and that is not proper—a lot of people think that—the housing officer will tell them that the father can share a bedroom with the son and the mother can share a bedroom with the daughter. That will be how they are supposed to live. The idea that the couple can share a bedroom is not accepted: the family are not seen as overcrowded and they just have to make do.

I once tried to explain that to a family—I only tried it only, and we got only part way through the discussion. The situation was not helped by the fact that the family was from a culture with different attitudes towards sharing bedrooms. They did not appreciate the fact that it is not accepted in Britain that a married couple should be entitled to share a bedroom. I have never again tried to explain that to any constituent. I want an assurance from my right hon. Friend on what is a pair. I also want an assurance, in relation to the bedroom standard, about what happens to a child under one, because at present they do not count at all. I also want to know what happens to a child under 10, because it implies in the Bill that two can share a room whereas, under our present overcrowding standards four can share a room, I think. We need to be absolutely clear about what happens, because it is children under 10 and under one who are important for child poverty. I want to know what space allocations they are expected to have.

In addition, the list covers sharing a house with a disabled adult but not with a disabled child. I want to know what happens and whether there are any guarantees on having, not just a play area but a stairlift if the child is disabled.

Finally, there is the question of precedence. I want to know what precedence the standards in the undergrowth of the Bill have over other bits of legislation. Otherwise, we have a wish list that will not be enforced because it is just that: a wish list. I will try not to test your patience, Mr. Key, but I have an example of why precedence is so important.

I had a constituent with three children. She had been in prison for stabbing her partner. The children were all aged under three and they lived in a two-bedroomed flat. The pressures were made worse by her having another baby. Even after meetings with my right hon. Friend’s colleague, the Minister in the Lords in charge of child protection, it was impossible to find a piece of legislation that put any pressure on the Liberal Democrat local authority to re-house that family. There was no money going in to the family so they were in absolute poverty. The material deprivation was clearly profound but there was no possibility of tackling the child poverty and material deprivation suffered by that family by getting them moved.

Unless the standards in the Bill are given priority over other standards, we will not be able to tackle one of the real drivers of hardship and suffering among children. Children cannot bring friends home for tea if—as in one case in my constituency—their 15-year-old brother is autistic and spends all his time walking up and down the living room. They cannot get their homework done or bring friends home if they have to share a bedroom with two siblings. If we are to tackle child poverty and the material deprivation that poor families suffer, it is important that the wonderful standards set down in the list are made enforceable by law. I ask my right hon. Friend to give clear assurances on how the standards are to be regarded, how they are to be treated and what priority they are to have over other overcrowding standards, including the statutory one, which was bad 75 years ago and is completely unacceptable today.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

The Committee owes a debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for Northampton, North for her remarks. She is clearly very knowledgeable on the subject and I will listen with great interest to the Minister. He is a Treasury Minister, so I hope he has a good brief from the Department for Communities and Local Government in his pack when he comes to answer the hon. Lady’s specific points.

I am also grateful to the combined ministerial team for sending a helpful note yesterday evening that gave the Committee further guidance on the difference between the bedroom standard and the parts of the material deprivation measure that relate to housing. The note says that

“the standards within the material deprivation measure are in fact, quite tight.”

I am not entirely clear about the relationship between the two, so I would be grateful if the Minister could elaborate on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness put his finger on it earlier when he said that, in basic terms, we are talking about supply and demand. The bottom line is that there are too many people for the number of houses. We can solve that in two ways. We can increase the number of houses or we can look at some of the demand factors, which, in part, relate to the fact that we are living longer, and to family breakdown and immigration. They are all part of the mix, so it is a big policy area. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the issue—it takes me back to 2001 when she was Housing Minister and touched on such matters. In fact, the first Bill Committee I ever sat on as a Back Bencher was when she was a Housing Minister.

My last point relates to another area of ministerial responsibility for the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. When I think about the decreasing supply in the private rented sector I relate it to aspects of the local housing allowance regulations that landlords and tenants up and down the country say are making life more difficult for families, and reducing the supply. I do not know whether the Minister can comment on that aspect of LHA when he replies to the quite proper points made by the hon. Member for Northampton, North.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I will speak only briefly because the hon. Member for Northampton, North is very knowledgeable. I congratulate her on bringing forward the key issue of housing standards. When we consider child poverty, we have to acknowledge that the vast number of children living in temporary accommodation is a disgrace. It is one of the worst things that can blight a child’s prospects, and it is absolutely right that we discuss it in the context of the Bill.

The hon. Lady raised a couple of issues, to which I hope the Minister will respond specifically. One is the list of things that count as material deprivation. There are many good things on it—housing-related issues, such as separate bedrooms, and on the adult definition, issues such as keeping the house warm—so housing is already included in one sense. However, how was the list determined? I hope that the Minister can give us some more information about that. One of the best things about the Bill is that it covers material deprivation literally—in a bricks and mortar sense that the public can understand. It is not just “60% of median equivalent income before housing costs”, but, “Can you keep your house warm?” The lists are excellent, but because they are critical to the success or failure of the child poverty strategy, we need to know where they come from and that they command broad public support. One could think of 100 things that one might put on such a list. Therefore, my first question is where does this list come from?

Secondly, where does the score of 25 come from? Although 60 per cent. of median is a bit arbitrary so too is a score of 25 on material deprivation. Where did that come from? If we are to take account of housing and various other things, we need to know the basis for it.

I have a slight suspicion that amendment 17 would have the opposite effect to what the hon. Lady intended. To count as poor under clause 3, a person has to tick box (a) and box (b). If they also have to tick box (c) as well, it becomes harder to be counted as poor. As the Bill stands, if a child is living below 70 per cent. of median and in material deprivation, they are poor. However, if we add (c), which would insert “bad housing conditions” and that child is not badly housed, we have just taken them out of poverty—perversely—on that definition. I am sure that is not what the hon. Lady intended, but that is what amendment 17 would do.

I very much support the fact that the hon. Lady has brought the issue of housing to the fore. It is critical to the well-being of children, but I am not convinced that this is quite the set of amendments to do it. None the less, I look forward to the Minister’s response on her key points.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The point made by the hon. Member for Northavon is a good one, but I am sure that the purpose in tabling the amendment was to prompt not only the full and frank Government response we shall doubtless receive but consideration of other ways of strengthening the housing element.

I make no apology for repeating my congratulations to the hon. Member for Northampton, North on raising the issue. It is a matter of genuine bewilderment for me to observe that although one would have thought that the Labour Government would prioritise housing, they have failed to do so in pure number terms. As my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire says, whatever regulations are set up, it is a matter of supply and demand. There either are the houses or there are not. If there are not the houses, it will be the poor and the vulnerable who are squeezed out and find themselves in inappropriate conditions.

Even with regulations in place, if the housing is not available the regulations will be breached and people will live in unsuitable housing. I congratulate the hon. Lady but I wonder why she is not joined by more of her colleagues in putting pressure on Ministers to do more. Fewer affordable housing units have been built and those that have been built have been smaller because of regulations brought in by the Government and because of the grant system. We have fewer and smaller units, and families with more than one or two children can easily find themselves living in grossly unsuitable housing—housing that would have been considered grossly unsuitable by Labour and Conservative MPs in 1935. Now in 2009 the same standards apply and the pressure is increasing.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Before I give way to the hon. Lady I should like to pay tribute to Zacchaeus 2000 and Professor Peter Ambrose’s briefing paper, “Bad, Getting Worse and Very Expensive”, on children and overcrowding. That is the situation that we ask Ministers to respond to today.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

The argument is getting circular. If we ask about the level of statutory overcrowding we are told that it is very low. It is very low because the standards are so bad. I do not point out the circularity of the argument as an excuse, but as part of the reason why it is hard to get the point across about the real mischief of overcrowding.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I thank the hon. Lady. I agree. I certainly do not dismiss the importance of regulation but I was supporting the point my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire made about supply and demand. It is incumbent on the Government in such a highly planned country as the UK to ensure that the system of regulations, and the way they are applied by local authorities and inspectors from Bristol pronouncing over the heads of local people, works in a way that matches housing need with housing supply. There has been a complete failure in that respect by this Government, which is why things are bad, getting worse and very expensive, and it is those with the lowest incomes who pay the price.

I am bewildered and surprised that more MPs from both sides do not spend more time experiencing the lives of their constituents and talking to them about what really bothers them. If they did, there would be more momentum in this place to insist that changes were made and housing was supplied.

The hon. Lady has made all the other points that I wanted to make. The kitchen as a place to sleep—in 2009 it is absurd and grotesque to have people living in such conditions. It is things like that and the failure to deliver on them that make me particularly sceptical about the Bill and its supposed eradication of child poverty and its setting of targets in statutory form. On the ground fundamental things such as housing are bad and getting worse. If I were convinced that the Bill would change overall broad policy to ensure that people on low incomes could access decent housing I would be much more supportive of it.

It is a tribute to the decency and tolerance of the people of this country that during the long period when so few units have been built, and those units were grossly small and inadequate, when there has been uncontrolled immigration, people have been living longer, there have been big increases in households and the Government have not supplied the housing that is needed, extremists found a way of getting elected only in a proportional representation election for the European Parliament. I do not think that the British people—particularly those who suffer the most at the bottom of the housing ladder—will stay so tolerant for long if this Government or the next do not take housing more seriously.

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

I had not intended to contribute to the debate, but I have been antagonised into so doing. In truth, there are enough houses to deal with overcrowding, homelessness and housing need. The issue is with distribution. More than 2 million second or empty homes are available to us. The question is not simply one of physical capacity.

Overcrowding, which was raised so powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North, is concentrated almost exclusively in 30 local authority areas. There is a tail of problems elsewhere. It is a problem for local authorities in London, Slough, Luton and some inner cities in other parts of the country. Local government needs more freedoms, but I am reluctant to tear up targets and controls on local authorities. It is an indictment of local government in those specific areas that it has not risen to the challenge.

The reason for the overcrowding crisis in this country is that the supply of social rented accommodation has been in freefall for three decades. Right-to-buy properties were taken out of the stock of social housing and not replaced. Above all, they were not replaced in the places where they were lost, nor using the same style and size of accommodation.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Since I was elected to this place, I have been trying to discover why fewer affordable housing units are being built under the Labour Government than at any point during the times of austerity, recession, economic difficulty and turnaround of the last Conservative Government. Why have they failed to provide affordable units for the people one would have thought they would see as a core constituency that they—like all of us—should serve?

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

I was about to respond to that point. I have a germ of agreement because there is some truth in it. The Government rightly spent billions of pounds—I do not have the figure at my fingertips—on the decent homes initiative to get substandard local authority social housing up to a decent condition. Almost all of my constituents in such accommodation have had new kitchens and bathrooms and external work done on their properties. That was long overdue and was done at huge expense. A great deal of value has been accrued from it. That money was therefore not spent on social housing construction.

I have argued since 1997 that we should spend more on housing. I doubt that would be supported by the Conservative party, which is planning to take a substantial amount of money out of the social housing budget. On top of the decent homes initiative, more money should have been spent on building new homes.

Local authorities up and down the country—including in areas where overcrowding is most acute—say that they will not build more social homes. Those authorities are largely Conservative controlled, although some are Liberal Democrat controlled and the occasional one is Labour controlled. Southwark and possibly Newham are among the councils that say, “We do not want any more social homes because we have too many people living on low incomes in social homes and we want a different tenure mix.” There is an argument for that. However, I do not hear local authorities in Wiltshire, Norfolk, Hammersmith and Fulham or Barnet saying that they want a different tenure mix with more social housing to meet the needs of their local people and other people with housing needs up and down the country. That is a problem.

As it happens, there has been a significant increase in the construction of social housing in London in the past few years, driven by Mayor Livingstone. We will wait and see whether, given the tearing up of the targets, that will be carried through by Mayor Johnson. It is true that across the country as a whole, the social housing construction that we need has not taken place, but in the areas where we need it most, it has begun to feed through. However, it is now being blocked. There are a number of responses to the crisis rightly mentioned by my hon. Friend, and the right kind of supply in the right places is what we need to deal with it.

My last point to Ministers is that I am absolutely clear that the Department for Communities and Local Government has failed dismally for the past 12 years to recognise how critical overcrowding is to children’s life chances. It is frankly embarrassing that for years and years, my hon. Friend and I, and others, have been saying, “Update the standard, make overcrowding as much a priority as homelessness—if not more—and help us deal with this.” If the Bill and the thinking behind the amendments are a way for us to exercise leverage on DCLG to do so, I support them wholeheartedly.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

We have had an interesting debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North made an extremely impressive case. She is a committed campaigner on these issues, as has been clear to everybody in the Committee. She was also right to highlight the scale of the overcrowding problem in my constituency. I urge her not to press her amendment, partly because, as the hon. Member for Northavon said, it would have the opposite effect to what she intends, partly due to the risk of distracting from the tight focus on poverty that we debated in the amendments to clause 1 and partly because I think that the amendments are not the right measures for dealing directly with the issues that she raised.

However, my hon. Friend certainly raised extremely important issues about which the Committee will want reassurances. I am struggling a little to answer the detailed points that she raised, but I can give her some information in response. The best way to deal with them might be to come back with further detail when I am in a position to do so. I am certainly happy, as I know she is, to convey to our colleagues in DCLG the strength of the views that she and others in the Committee have expressed as they have reflected on what to do about overcrowding.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to underline the importance of ensuring that children live in suitable, good-quality housing and the impact of housing conditions on health and educational development. I was talking to one of my constituents on Friday about the problem that her child did not have somewhere to do her homework, exactly as my hon. Friend said. By the end of next year, we will have invested more than £40 billion—the figure to which my hon. Friend the Member for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North alluded—and completed work to make 3.6 million social homes decent. That is 95 per cent. of the total. It has been a big programme of investment, which was necessary because of the previous Government’s neglect and an absence of investment in housing in the past. However, there is certainly more to do, and recent announcements on supply and overcrowding will help to ensure that we maintain momentum.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

However new and shiny the kitchen, does the Minister still think it appropriate, this year, that a family should be sleeping in it?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I certainly do not. I hope, however, that the hon. Gentleman will reverse his opposition to the Government’s bringing forward investment in housing as part of our response to the recession. That will help us to make some headway on matters.

I will set out how the Bill addresses housing, and I hope that that will be helpful. The combined low income and material deprivation target requires us to ensure that fewer than 5 per cent. of children are living in households experiencing both material deprivation and an income below 70 per cent. of the median before housing costs. Of the 21 items currently used to define material deprivation, two relate explicitly to housing. One relates to whether families have enough money to keep their home in a decent state of decoration, while the other relates to the number of bedrooms in the home, a point particularly welcomed by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North.

The items were chosen following independent expert analysis of how to identify families living in poor housing conditions. The question in the material deprivation survey about the number of bedrooms asks, as my hon. Friend said, whether the household has enough bedrooms for every child aged 10 years or more of a different gender to have their own bedroom.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I was very surprised by the figures; in about 82 per cent. of the households that responded, the children said that they did have enough bedrooms. Was that because there were enough bedrooms in total, or because there were enough bedrooms if the parents slept in the sitting room? I was not clear about that, as it seems unlikely that there would be enough bedrooms if only bedrooms were used as bedrooms.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

Perhaps I could come back to my hon. Friend on that, but the survey is quite subjective. It asks whether there are enough bedrooms, and it records the answer. I do not think that it goes into great detail about the sleeping arrangements in the home. Its intention is to establish the self-reporting of material deprivation as part of the measures under the Bill.

Judy Mallaber (Labour, Amber Valley)

May I ask for a statement of fact? I might be stupid and may have missed some documents, but will my right hon. Friend tell us where the list of factors relating to material deprivation is set out, explain how we can get hold of it and say whether we have already been given a copy?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

As the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire said, there was information on that matter in the letter that went around yesterday, but the “households below average income” survey is the key source for the data.

If I explained a little more where we are in the process, it might clarify the position. Each of the 21 items used to measure material deprivation has a separate weighting, depending on how common it is for the general population to be able to afford them. An overall score is achieved by adding up the weight for each item that has lapsed because it cannot be afforded, and the score is then adjusted to one on a scale of zero to 100.

The hon. Member for Northavon asked how is it that a family is materially deprived if they score 25 or more on the scale. That figure emerged from the expert assessment. A lot of academic work has been done on the topic, with the result that 25 is about the right place to set the threshold. As I said, the measure is subjective, and the work is exploratory. A lot of it is new. That is the state of the art; that is where we have got to.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

In answer to question 203, Neil O’Brien made the important point that the data underlying material deprivation were very weak. Reading through his helpful policy note, it seems that there is quite a lot of continuity in the approach taken since the early years of this decade. Presumably, the weakness applies to that. Is the Minister satisfied that he has overcome the weakness identified in the data?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

The current list of material deprivation items was selected in 2003. Work is under way at the moment to update that list, and the view among the academic experts to whom I have referred is that it would be sensible to update the list every five years. In that way, we could allow the measure to keep pace with public perceptions of disadvantage, but it would not move too fast and thus confuse or disguise the picture, in relation to whether progress was being made. We have commissioned research to identify whether and how the current items should be updated to ensure that the measure remains a robust measure of contemporary living standards, and we are talking to academic experts as part of that. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North, that regulations will set out how material deprivation, including the housing element, will be measured, and that will enable us to do the updating in the way that I have described. I hope that that picks up the issues raised in her amendments 18 and 19.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Will those regulations give some priority to some of the more pressing indicators? It would be perverse if a child could have a friend over once a fortnight for tea and was able to go on holiday, but spent their entire childhood living in an appalling slum.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I think that my hon. Friend’s question is about the weightings that are applied to each of the 21 indicators. I am happy to give her some information about that, and she may want to comment. It is still an evolving science, and there may well be lessons to be learned from the debate about how that weighting should be applied.

I ought to draw attention to the fact that, along with the material deprivation target, housing is listed in clause 8 as one of the key areas to be considered when preparing a child poverty strategy. As with each of the building blocks underpinning the strategy, work is under way to analyse the impact of housing on child poverty, including both the direct impact on material deprivation and the importance of good quality housing for other related outcomes, for example parental employment, family health and children’s education. The duties in part 2 will also lead local authorities and those working with them to address housing issues that arise in their areas—my hon. Friend touched on that. For example, needs assessments will need to be undertaken to identify the quality of housing occupied by families with children living in poverty in the local area. By using housing items to help to define material deprivation, requiring the child poverty strategy to consider housing as one of the building blocks and ensuring that local partners consider local housing issues, the Bill will be effective in mitigating for children the effects of bad housing conditions and the other material effects of living in poverty.

I have talked a little about the two items relating to housing. As I have said, the items used are updated over time to capture contemporary living standards—not the bare basics—and the fact that they will be in regulations means that they can be updated. The local needs assessment regulations, which my hon. Friend touched on, are in draft. She may want to comment on the detail of those, and there is an opportunity to do so. We have to ensure, of course, that local needs assessment regulations are deliverable, and that local partners have access to the data that they need in order to comply. We are working with the Department for Communities and Local Government on that, and there may well be an opportunity in that dialogue to pursue my hon. Friend’s concerns on overcrowding.

The items that we use at the moment for material deprivation come from the 2003 consultation on measuring child poverty. I mentioned that the child poverty unit has commissioned independent academic analysis to identify whether and which items need updating. If new items were needed, they would be included in the 2010-11 survey to measure income and material deprivation.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I asked specifically about what constitutes a bedroom and who decides what is a pair, and I also asked about precedence. I particularly wanted an answer in Committee because that will be important for later interpretation of the Bill. Will my right hon. Friend deal with those specific points? There were also issues about children under the age of one.

What precedence does the standard—it may be revised, and I take the point that it appears likely that housing will be included in the new list—take over other types of measures? That precise point was raised earlier: in the absence of the new regulations that the Government committed themselves to bringing forward some time ago, there is a plethora of different standards, and the basic one is abysmally low. That is the one that I read out, which was objected to 75 years ago.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

On the question of what constitutes a bedroom, I will need to clarify that and come back to my hon. Friend with a bit more detail.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

The point of being able to ask in Committee is so that the answer will be in Hansard. An exchange of letters does not have the same status. It is important to set out what is meant by the standard, which will have a profound impact on the standard of housing provided for our constituents. It will have a real effect on some of the poorest families and children. We need to know the sequencing of the standards in the Bill, in relation to measures in other legislation that affects housing for families and children.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I have said that I will need to check on some of the points and come back on them. However, there will undoubtedly be opportunities later in the Committee’s sittings, or on Report, for me to put that detail on the record, and I shall be happy to do so.

However, I want to sound a cautionary note, because of course the statutory regulations under housing law will take precedence. The Bill may well effectively apply pressure for change, but it would be misleading if I were to give the Committee the impression that the inclusion of a particular formulation in the material deprivation index will override housing law. However, I shall be happy to come to the Committee or the House with the further detail that my hon. Friend has asked for, and ensure that it is on the record.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

On that basis, and as there will be plenty of other opportunities to pursue the points of concern, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

I remind the Committee of the convention that we should be careful not to bring beverages into the room.

Clause 4

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Despite the clause’s title, it is based, as Committee members have pointed out—the hon. Member for Northavon will shortly seek to catch your eye on that point, Mr. Key—on a rather curious methodology that it will perhaps cause the Government little difficulty to achieve. It refers to the absolute low income target but relates to an equalised net income for households with less than 60 per cent. of median income, with a base year of 1 April 2010. Ordinarily, a normal amount of economic growth should lift the vast majority of families in the UK comfortably above that baseline. By 2020 we will hopefully have had 10 years of growth, as we are told that the UK economy is returning to growth as we speak and we all hope that we will avoid another horrid recession in the coming decade.

There are questions about whether the target is demanding and whether it is a genuine absolute low income target. When giving evidence to the Committee, Rev. Paul Nicolson and others mentioned minimum income standards, such as the cost of feeding a family, which might be the type of definition that members of the public would more easily identify with the phrase “absolute low income”. What is the absolute minimum amount of income one needs to put food on the table and clothes on the backs of one’s family and to keep one’s house warm? Would the Minister explain the methodology used and state why that particular target has been set in relation to absolute low income?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I suppose every Bill has its clause 4 moment, and this is it for this Bill. As someone famously never said, I am not convinced that we need a clause 4. It relates to one of four targets, and it is the one that could be done with one’s eyes closed. It is the one that has been put in the Bill to enable Ministers to sleep at night.

The figures for households below average income provide that sort of statistic for the preceding 10 years, so the 1998-99 median is used as the baseline and the figures from nine years later show that in the baseline year 3.4 million children were living in poverty. However, holding the baseline constant, that figure had halved to 1.7 million by 2007-08. I cannot think of a meaningful definition of poverty to which the answer would be, “It has halved in the past 10 years”, and I do not think that in his heart of hearts the Financial Secretary could either. Is it even an interesting question? It is a little like saying, “Well, the Victorians used to think that an inside lav was the height of luxury, but things have moved on since then.” If we are serious about tackling child poverty in any meaningful way, holding things constant and assuming that the world is still as it was a decade ago will not lead us to ask interesting questions.

There is a more serous point. If we have four targets, one of which is a “gimme” that we can effectively tick now, does that undermine the ability to hold the Government to account for failing to meet one or more of the others? If we got rid of clause 4 so that we had only three targets and the Government failed to meet two of them, one might say that was hopeless. If we have four targets, of which we can assume that one is already met so that the Government are halfway there, perhaps the public opprobrium and the pressure for action will be less. Although in theory the enforcement mechanism is judicial review, we all know that the famous court of public opinion and the extent to which our electorate demand action from us will come into play. If we just have targets that are easy to meet, and not stretching, we may inadvertently con the public into thinking that something has been achieved when it has not. I suggest that clause 4 does not stand part of the Bill, because it does not add anything.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The hon. Gentleman asks whether there is any way that we can see poverty on any measure having reduced over the past 10 years. The proposal is to raise the absolute income target figure with inflation over the years. The truth is that, at an absolute level, not a relative one—that is the point and it is clear in the clause title—the number of people who do not have that level of money today will increase in future, so there will be a reduction, and there is a measurement of something real. The measure is an actual amount of money, not a measure against everyone else. Perhaps the school trips will be better, the holidays longer and the presents required bigger, but there will have been an absolute increase in the level of the household’s income and therefore there is a purpose to having the target.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I think I asked whether there was any meaningful definition of poverty on which we could say poverty had halved in the past 10 years. That is what has happened on the absolute poverty measure for the past 10 years, holding the baseline of 10 years ago. I do not think that there is a meaningful definition. We may differ, but I do not think that that is an interesting question, although in a sense that is a slightly academic point. The principal point is that it is one of four targets that the Government will meet with their eyes closed. Even a Conservative Government could meet that target. That is why I think it would be an unnecessarily easy target to have in the Bill.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

The hon. Gentleman again makes an interesting point. I take his point about the target being unambitious, but much though we recognise that relative poverty is important, he appears to be arguing that absolute poverty is unimportant, or is something that we should not be too worried about. Perhaps the better approach, given his argument, would be to have a more ambitious absolute poverty target as opposed to getting rid of that target altogether.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

There is a bit of confusion about the word “absolute”. It is not absolute in a “can you feed and clothe yourself?” sense. I can do no better than quote footnote 2 in the Library note, which says:

“Confusingly, Government statements sometimes refer to figures on individuals in households below income thresholds held constant in real terms over time”—

that is these ones—

“as indicating the numbers living in ‘absolute poverty’, but this is quite different from the ordinary meaning”.

In other words, we are not talking about how many people can do the basics of life—feed and clothe themselves and all the rest of it. We are talking about how many people are below a price-indexed version of the 60 per cent. median before housing costs and equivalised definition from 10 years ago, which is not interesting. It does not measure anything—it is just a number off a graph from 10 years ago.

It is true that we are hitting a moving target on the relative measures and that is a problem, but in my understanding poverty is where a person is. In the third world it is about clean water and food, but in this country our understanding of poverty must be deeper and richer than that. That is my essential contention and why I do not think that such an undemanding target should be in the Bill.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

The reason we have included the absolute low-income target is to ensure that the incomes of the least well-off families rise in real terms over the next decade, and to ensure that such families are able to improve their standards of living and provide their children with the basic essentials. It is true that over the past decade gross domestic product has been growing and living standards rising. In that sense, for much of the decade—although not all of it—the number below the threshold set in terms of 1997 incomes was declining, although the number in absolute poverty has stabilised over the past few years, so it is not absolutely automatic that the number will always go up whatever happens.

Subsections (1) to (4) require that by 2020, less than 5 per cent. of children are living in households with an income below 60 per cent. of the 2010 median income before housing costs. There was support in the consultation for including an indicator of that kind. That is at the heart of my argument. We asked people whether they thought that there should be an absolute poverty indicator. There was a variety of views, but a small majority—a majority nevertheless—favoured including one. I think the reason was to make absolutely sure that in terms of living standards, we do not go backwards for the poorest families. There could be a scenario where relative poverty falls, but absolute poverty as defined in this way might not. There is therefore an underpinning, or a backstop, provided by the target, which the majority—a small majority, but nevertheless a majority—of people we consulted thought was worth having.

The crucial thing is whether the incomes of the least well-off families will rise, at least in line with prices. During a downturn such as the one we are in at the moment, when average incomes may be flat or falling, one can envisage that while there may be fewer children in relative poverty, their family incomes may actually be falling.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

The Minister is right to say that over the very short term the number has been static, but is he really asking us to believe that it is a credible scenario that real living standards will be lower in a decade’s time than they are now? That is presumably the only circumstance in which one target will not dominate another one.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

The question is whether we will achieve the 5 per cent. target. It is not a static target, but 5 per cent., which means that we will have to make a fair amount of progress on the indicator over the next 10 years. As I said, it is a kind of backstop safeguard for the incomes, in real terms, of the least well-off families. The majority view in the consultation—I think rightly—was that it was worth including.

I think I am right in saying—although I hesitate in going into this territory because the hon. Gentleman knows a great deal more about it than I do—that this is how it is done in the US. There is a lot of talk in the US about people in poverty. I think an absolute measure—absolute in terms that were defined a long time ago—is used there. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that we certainly should not use it as our only measure, as they do in the States. However, as one of four, it is a helpful backstop and safeguard, as the majority in the consultation thought, too. On that basis, I commend the target’s inclusion, and the clause, to the Committee.

Clause 5

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I beg to move amendment 23, in clause 5, page 2, line 37, leave out “2015” and insert “2012”.

Lest I be misunderstood or thought grudging, I should say that I think that the presence of a range of poverty targets in the Bill is entirely welcome—with the exception of the target that we have just discussed. The inclusion of material deprivation is a welcome step, as is the inclusion of persistent poverty in clause 5. They are all good things that future Governments will come to rue, I am sure.

Amendment 23 relates to one of the details of the persistent poverty target, namely the date, set out in clause 5(3), by which the target percentage has to be prescribed by regulations. When I first read the clause, I could not believe what I saw. Here we are in 2009, legislating for a process that we are already meant to be halfway through, and we will be three quarters of the way through the process before we have even decided what the target is on one of the four key measures. That seems a bit slow.

There will be arguments about data, I am sure, and I welcome the fact that, as I understand it, the Government are commissioning what is known in the academic literature as a socking great panel survey, which will be much bigger than what we had before. I remember working on the British household panel survey in years gone by. Wonderful though it was, it was certainly small. Given the annual panel attrition, and given that we started with only 5,000 households, we soon got to small sample sizes. The idea of basing that indicator on something much bigger gets me salivating. It is entirely a good thing.

Having said that, it is not a good enough excuse to say, “We have to put the panel into the field, and then we have to have another wave and yet another wave. We then have to crunch the numbers and think about it for a few more years, and then we will have a target.” The target should bite on Government policy, but how can it do so if it does not exist until halfway through the remainder of the period?

How can the child poverty commission recommend action that will enable us to hit the targets in clause 5 if it has not decided what they are? Given that we are talking about some of the most difficult poverty to tackle, namely persistent poverty—there is a clue in the title, as it were—leaving the setting of the target until five years down the track seems problematic. It is an oversimplification to say that we would be just leaving the issue; clearly, one would want to be doing something about persistent poverty, anyway, but how much “something” would you need to do, and for which groups? We will not know until 2015. The Minister will say that subsection (3) only says that the regulations should be made not later than 2015, but that is an awful lot of leeway.

Our modest amendment simply brings the target forward to 2012, not because that is the year of the Olympics, but because that gives the Government half as much time as they want—they want six years, and we want to give them three. That is not a very scientific reason either, but we are trying to probe why the Government think that they need six years. The gist of the argument is that the target will be really difficult to meet. We are dealing with intractable, persistent poverty that requires an awful lot of work and concentration of effort. If we do not know what the targets are until halfway through the period, how on earth, in that final five years, are things to be done? Yes, we can start now, but if we do not know the scale of what we are even trying to achieve until six years down the track, what hope have we got of achieving it? I encourage the Committee to accept our amendment.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

The hon. Gentleman has done the Committee a service in tabling the amendment. I am minded to support it, if he is willing to press it to a Division. He makes an entirely fair point. It is now 2009; it is six years to 2015, which is a long time to wait. If we are to have a definition, we need to know what it is sooner rather than later, so that we can drive policy in a sensible direction. I cannot think of any good reason why the setting of the target should be left so late, so I listen with interest to the Minister’s defence of the 2015 date.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

The amendment would require the target to be set before 2012, rather than before 2015. I just point out that the wording in the Bill is “before”, not “by”. In other words, in order to meet the timetable set out in the Bill, that target would have to be prescribed by regulations made by 2014, so we are not talking about setting the target halfway—the whole halfway, anyway—through the period, although we are talking about a fair chunk of the first half of the decade.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Northavon for welcoming the inclusion of the persistent poverty target. I agree with him that the number of children below the poverty line in three years out of four is a very important and telling piece of data. The target was welcomed by the witnesses who gave evidence last week, and it will enable us to focus attention on families who spend significant periods of time below the poverty line.

The reason for the delay until 2014—or possibly earlier; the target percentage would have to be set by 2014—is, as the hon. Gentleman anticipated, the new, larger survey. I note that he is salivating over it; let me give him a little more information about it. As he knows, the survey currently used to measure persistent poverty is the British household panel survey. That is being subsumed, from this year, within a new survey, Understanding Society—a larger survey, as he said—which we intend to use to measure persistent poverty in the future. The first full set of data from that survey will be available in 2011, and the second full set in 2012.

I hope that I can persuade the hon. Gentleman that it would be technically impossible to comply with his proposal, which is that the target be set before 2012. We will simply not have the second set of data by then, and once we receive it, it will need to be analysed if we are to come up with a sensible and intelligent target for persistent poverty. We could argue that we need more than two years of data, but we want to deal with the issue on the basis of the first two years. I hope that the Committee accepts that we need at least two years of data if we are to come up with a sensible target.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Obviously, the data required for the purposes of subsection (3) do not currently exist. What data do the Government have that would be relevant?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

We do have data. They depend on whether one uses the McClements measure, or the OECD equivalence scale. However, the most recent data indicate that 1.4 million children—10 per cent. of all UK children—were in persistent poverty from 2004 to 2007. That proportion is down by 7 per cent. from 1997 to 2000. We have therefore made good progress on that measure, but, as I have said, there will be a discontinuity in the survey, and we need to assess the new survey before we can sensibly set a target; otherwise, we will be setting it in the dark.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

If we have a reasonably robust number, why do we need to wait, for target-setting purposes, for the welcome and salivatingly delicious extended new survey before setting a target and sending a message to policy makers and Departments about the cross-departmental arrangements that need to be put in place to tackle the issue?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

We do so on the basis of the expert advice that we have taken. We simply do not know what the new survey will show. It will be conducted on an entirely different basis, and the numbers will not necessarily be continuous with the previous measure; there could be a discontinuity in one direction or the other. Until we have seen the data, we just will not know. It might be helpful if I assured the Committee that we seek to deal with the matter as quickly as we can. Neither the Government nor I have an interest in causing delay. The point is purely technical; we need the data before we can credibly set a target. That is the view of those who have advised us on the issue.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

The Minister said what I thought he would say about the data, but what about the point that we have a perfect storm here? The last target to be set relates to what is arguably the most intractable problem to solve. Is there not a case for bringing forward the target so that we can get on and tackle the intractable problem?

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I do not think that we need to delay addressing the problem. When the strategy is produced, within a year of Royal Assent, it will need to address the problem straight away. We will not know the target, or its numerical value, until we have analysed the second wave of data.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I appreciate the Minister engaging with the question, but I find his answer one of the least convincing that we have heard. I do not see how one can set out a strategy to meet a target that does not exist. One can have a strategy to tackle persistent poverty, but the target will bring in wholly different sets of people, depending on whether it ends up being 3, 5 or 7 per cent. If the target is “only” 3 per cent., that clearly represents one particular sort of child. If we broaden the measure much more and set a higher target, that might involve interventions in a whole different set of circumstances. We would be completely in the dark if we did not have a target for the first four or five years. The system could be fatally flawed if we do not know the target early on.

As the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness rightly said, there are data. The British household panel survey goes back to the start of the ’90s. It is not brilliant, and it is not big, but it is not that bad. People have been making academic careers out of it for long enough. I do not see why we should not say, “This new bigger survey will clearly be more detailed, but it is a household survey, as the other one was.” A Government who are serious about such a target will struggle to approach it rationally if it does not exist for five years. Clearly, the Minister will not have his new data in time to meet our target, but a run of 15-odd years of the old data tells him enough to set a rational target. In any case, clause 5 allows the Government to vary the target if they need to, in the light of further information, so the target percentage would be a ballpark figure, not an absolute figure. On that basis, I encourage the Committee to accept the amendment.

Clause 6

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I beg to move amendment 24, in clause 6, page 3, line 13, at end insert—

‘(f) The publication of analysis of the sensitivity of the estimates of child poverty under sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 to the methodological assumptions which underlie those estimates.’.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 25, in clause 6, page 3, line 13, at end insert—

‘(f) How poverty among children who are not included in household surveys is to be assessed.’.

Amendment 26, in clause 6, page 3, line 13, at end insert—

‘(f) How the statistical surveys used to calculate poverty rates are to be re-weighted to reflect under-reporting of specified groups.’.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I apologise to the Committee if it might be thinking that we are entering what might be regarded as a slightly “anoraky” phase in our discussions, but what the heck? The three amendments are all fairly self-explanatory, so I will not dwell on them at length. They raise three separate issues. Clearly, as amendment 24 points out, we have four different definitions of poverty, but each of them involves some very complex assumptions. For example, let us consider our discussions this morning about the 21 things it takes not to be materially deprived, and recognise that they are all given a weight. We then draw a line of 25 against that, and people are poor if they are above it, but not if they are below it. The fact that that has to be combined by 70 per cent. of median income on a certain equivalent scale and a certain definition of treatment for housing shows us that the whole thing is built on a mass of assumptions and methodological decisions. I do not doubt for a second that the statisticians who put such things together do so in good faith, but they will know far better than I do that the assumptions we make determine the number we get at the end.

Some of the assumptions might be entirely marginal and mild, but others might have a huge impact on the numbers that result. Such action therefore ends up not being a statistical point, but a real one. If we choose a definition that gives us half a million more children in poverty than another definition, the price tag attached to that probably runs into billions of pounds. We therefore have to be confident that the number we are looking at is not a figure within a very broad range that could have come out differently for a couple of assumptions that might be entirely reasonable. We do not necessarily want to take such action each year, but for the base year figures, we might need to see more evidence of the impact of the key assumptions on the numbers.

To give one example, as the Minister said, the statistics can be adjusted for household size in several different ways. The Department has traditionally used the McClements equivalence scale and now it proposes to use the OECD scale. To give the Government credit, they have thereby increased the child poverty numbers by a few hundred thousand. So they have not done this out of malign intent; they have made their job more difficult by that assumption. I only know that because there is a table in one of the documents to show the impact of that assumption.

That is just one of a very large number of assumptions. It would help if we knew where the numbers are coming from, how sensitive they are to the assumptions that have been made and how much of a mountain we are being asked to climb because of a particular set of assumptions. We need to know which are key and how much impact they have had. Amendment 24 simply requires the publication of this sort of sensitivity analysis. To some extent this sort of thing goes on anyway. The “Household Below Average Income” figures used to do a bit of this from time to time. Given the pivotal importance of these statistical measures for the future, some initial grounding for these measures would help our scrutiny.

Amendment 25 came up in our evidence sessions and we made some progress on that issue, but it is worth remembering that these figures for children in poverty are based on surveys of private households. People go out, knock on doors and sit in people’s front rooms with a laptop. That is essentially how these data are collected—or it certainly was when I went out with one of these surveyors, although not in the emotional sense. We sat in someone’s front room. There are an awful lot of children who will not be identified through that method.

We have talked about children in local authority care. The Minister’s response was, “Yes, but they are not poor.” The local authority ensures that they are not poor, but they may be deprived. If we are only interested in income poverty, fair enough, but if we are interested in some slightly broader concept of child welfare—without going all the way through our earlier discussions—we need to know what is going on with those children. Some of them will be permanently in care, but many will be transitorily in care and coming from poor households and going to poor households. How will they be picked up? The briefings we have had mention children in the criminal justice system, young offenders institutions and all the rest of it. Again, at that point they are being fed, clothed and housed so they are not poor, but if we are interested in children thriving and prospering, they are being missed out.

Some of the children of Gypsy and Traveller families, in theory, could end up in these surveys. I am thinking of Traveller sites in my constituency that are run by the local authority and that would count as private households in the sampling frame for the surveys. I am not sure—they have a postcode so that is probably all it takes. We are not excluding all Gypsy and Traveller children, but we are excluding those who live the most transient lifestyles, and we know that Gypsy and Traveller parents have low life expectancies and various other social problems. That would be true of their children too.

There is an issue about being exhaustive regarding who is missing. Let us be clear which of the nation’s children we are not including, and which of those we might have some concerns about. Is there any way we can either graft them into the statistics or have some auxiliary reporting, so we do not forget them? The risk is that we end up with the old target problem we talked about earlier: most of the nation’s children are in the figures, so those are the ones we focus on; there is no point helping Gypsy children because they are not in the figures. I do not suppose that any Government would be callous enough to do that explicitly, but if they are under legal pressure to hit a target that includes one set of children and omits another, we can see how that could happen.

Amendment 26 is about the fact that all these statistics are based on sample surveys. We are grossing up from perhaps 25,000 households in a survey to a population of some 25 million households. If a certain sort of household is less likely to respond to a survey than another, something has to be done. Who is less likely to respond? People in urban areas are less likely to respond, as are members of ethnic minorities, people who do not have English as a first language, the very elderly and so on. Clearly, we need to correct for those biases. To be fair to the Government, they do try to do that. They re-weight the survey so that if, for example, there is one very elderly person from an ethnic minority living in urban London, they get a bigger weight when the statistics are created.

However, I am not convinced that the grossing process—the re-weighting process—picks up adequately the under-reporting of children who are most likely to be in poverty. The serious point is that the current poverty numbers might be too low because some of the things not adequately weighted for are correlated with higher risk of child poverty. For example, I believe there is a regional weighting but not an inner-London weighting. I am open to correction but that is my understanding. If one thinks child poverty is higher in inner London but the weighting is only for London as a whole—with Twickenham gaining as much weight as Southwark, for example—one does not get the right figure for child poverty. I wonder what analysis the Minister has undertaken of the risk of not responding to a survey, and the correlation between that risk and the risk of child poverty.

I have one further question before I draw my remarks to a close. The “Households Below Average Income” statistical appendix describes the way in which the sample is weighted to achieve the population total. It says:

“In order to reconcile control variables at different levels”—

these are the true totals—

“and estimate their joint population”—

an example would be old people living in the north for whom English is a second language; in other words, a combination of such factors—

“software...provided by the French National Statistics Institute has been used. This software works by iterating towards an optimal solution that, given the particular control totals, minimises the range...of the grossing factors chosen.”

I am sure that that is true, but does it worry the Minister that in a sense, one ends up forcing the sample one has to match a whole grid of national population characteristics through a quite complex statistical forcing mechanism that tries to get the numbers right, but which may not represent what is going on in the world? In other words, one can have solutions that give very big weights to a particular household in a sample because it gets the numbers right—it gets the totals and the cross-tabs right—but one ends up with some odd results by giving hefty weights to particular sample members and low weights to others. It makes me uneasy that something we are going to spend tens of millions of pounds of public money on and debate at great length is based on an obscure statistical process that I am not sure has ever been demonstrated not to distort the data a bit too much. It gets the totals right and we are all happy about that, but do we know how robust the process is? That is my concern. I think the Minister has a higher mathematics degree, so he knows exactly what I am talking about and I hope he will run the Committee through the process.

All that probably sounds a bit technical but if we do not get these things right, they will have very big, real implications. Yes, it is real people we are talking about, but if we get the numbers a few hundred thousand out one way or another, the policy implications could be very serious. We need to have the information to hand to appraise the statistics we are being given, and that is the purpose of the amendments.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

It is not the first time this afternoon that the background of the hon. Member for Northavon as an academic in the social sciences has come to the fore to the benefit of the Committee. The hon. Gentleman, with the three amendments, is seeking clarity and transparency so that we know what we are talking about, so that these things are not hidden away in footnotes in HBAI tables, which are perhaps not readily available and understood. The amendments call for

“an analysis of the sensitivity...to the methodological assumptions”

and request information about how poverty is to be assessed and how under-reporting in response to surveys is to be dealt with. If the hon. Gentleman is looking to press the amendments to a vote, I would be minded to ask my colleagues to support him because I think clarity and transparency are to be welcomed, so that we know exactly the basis on which we are proceeding.

There is one group that the hon. Gentleman has not mentioned. He has mentioned children in local authority care, as well as Gypsies and Travellers, on whom we had some discussion, but I am not entirely clear about the position of the children of asylum seekers, or whether they are included. In the northern part of Bedfordshire, not in my constituency, we have the Yarl’s Wood detention centre. Will that be surveyed, and will all this be part of it? We need to be absolutely clear about which children we are and are not talking about. We might have a legitimate argument about whether some children should not be included for a particular reason, but I would be grateful if the Minister gave us some clarity about what the targets are based on.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I want to ask a little about qualifying households, net household incomes and deductions. I share others’ concerns about what happens to Gypsy and Traveller children, the children of asylum seekers and children whose immigration status is unclear. There is a clear distinction between vulnerability and poverty. The two might overlap, but this is about poverty. Children in the care system who have issues of vulnerability will come under the scope of different legislation and might not necessarily be the same as children who live in poverty. I would therefore like us to focus on children who live in the community rather than children who live in institutions. Somewhere such as Yarl’s Wood might not be quite the place to look for such children, because it is a residential, institutional setting, where they will be for only a certain amount of time. I am more concerned about children whose asylum claim has been turned down, for whom there can be some to-ing and fro-ing. As we all know, such cases can go on for years, at the end of which the children’s status might still be unresolved. If their parent cannot get benefits and cannot work, their poverty is acute and their housing is often pretty atrocious.

The same applies to Traveller children who might be centred around one address but who might travel around quite a lot and therefore do not come under the scope of any particular survey. The hon. Member for Northavon has made this point. I would not support the amendment because such children probably could not be included under any survey, partly because they are not static for long enough—especially Traveller children, whose families may still be quite mobile. Also, such children might not be very willing to come forward, especially if they are without immigration status, and it can be very hard to pin them down. I suspect that virtually 100 per cent. of children in those groups will be living in poverty, and I should like to know what other measures my right hon. Friend the Minister is taking to deal with poverty in those groups.

Finally, on net incomes, if one looks at poverty figures after housing costs are taken out, they are much more acute because of problems with housing costs. What is the Minister’s thinking about ensuring that housing costs do not push families into complete poverty?

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

The hon. Member for Northavon has made some important points through his amendments, and I am sure that he is right that certain groups will not be included in any household surveys. I am particularly concerned about the two groups that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North has just mentioned—Gypsy and Traveller children and asylum-seeking children. I know that it is extremely difficult to get information about Gypsy and Traveller households, but it is very important that they are taken account of in such surveys and calculations. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Gypsy and Traveller law reform, I have had extensive meetings with the census people about getting Gypsies and Travellers registered on the census. There is a huge effort going on to try and get those people registered on the census, by working in liaison with Gypsies and Travellers, trying to identify caravans, and through word of mouth in different areas. I hope that we will get a certain number of Gypsy and Traveller families on to the census, but it is extremely unlikely that they will ever show up in regular household surveys. Gypsy and Traveller children are some of the most deprived children in the land. There is not much financial information about them, but we know that they lose out in lists of material deprivation, particularly if they are moving around and not on local authority sites.

When the Minister responds, will he state what particular efforts will be made to include Gypsy and Traveller children in the Bill? We know that the income received by asylum-seeking families is below what is needed to live in the way that the rest of the country lives, and we know that those children are particularly vulnerable. I would be interested to hear what measures will be taken to help that group of children.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

Clause 6 enables a number of technical terms underpinning the child poverty targets in the previous clauses to be defined in regulations. I believe that a draft of those regulations was provided to members of the Committee last week, and they are subject to the affirmative procedure. I will follow the hon. Member for Northavon and speak to each amendment in turn.

Amendment 24 would add a discretionary regulation-making power to clause 6, requiring analysis of the sensitivity of child poverty statistics under the four targets in the Bill, and for the methodological assumptions underlying those statistics to be set out in the regulations. There are already provisions in the Bill that ensure that the underlying methodology used to calculate those statistics is robust and in line with accepted statistical practice. Clause 14(2) requires that the statistics used to measure progress on the four targets are national statistics. That means that they must adhere to the code of practice produced by the Statistics Board. That code states that producers will endeavour to ensure that methods used to produce national statistics are objectively chosen and based on sound statistical methods. It also states that quality measures must be regularly published to enable users to assess whether the statistics are fit for purpose.

The “Households below average income” series, where our child poverty figures are currently published, already includes information documenting the underlying assumptions. It presents statistics for a range of child poverty thresholds, both before and after housing costs have been deducted, and the figures on both are published. It provides a comparison with the modified OECD and McClements equivalence scale that was mentioned, which is used to adjust incomes for household size and composition. It also gives the confidence intervals for the number of children in relatively low-income households, which provides an indication of the measure’s precision. It might be helpful for me to make it clear that we expect all this information to be included in future editions of the publication.

Amendment 25 enables the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out how poverty should be measured for children who are not covered by the surveys, and I have listened with interest to the points raised by a number of hon. Members on that matter. The amendment would define ways in which the poverty of those children could be assessed, but it would not explicitly require poverty levels to be monitored or reduced. I assume that the broad purpose of the amendment is to ensure that children are adequately covered by provisions in the Bill, and that concern is shared across the Committee.

The targets that we are setting will be effective only if progress towards them is measurable. They apply to children in qualifying households, which are those households included in surveys. Of course, it would be great if we could include every child, but practically speaking, my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, North and for Cardiff, North are right. There is no way around the fact that some households will not turn up in surveys for the reasons indicated.

We have been careful to frame the Bill so that it does not exclude those children. Clause 8(2) sets out that the UK strategy needs to do two things: comply with

“the duty to ensure that the targets are met”;

but do so also

“for the purpose of ensuring as far as possible that children in the United Kingdom do not experience socio-economic disadvantage.”

That obligation on the strategy will ensure that the children we have talked about, who may well be missed out from the survey evidence, will nevertheless be beneficiaries of the Bill, because all children are covered by that provision, regardless of whether they are picked up by the surveys.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Will the Minister write a note to all members of the Committee—as has helpfully been done on two occasions so far this week, which I appreciate—in respect of non-resident parents? With parents who are separated, children are perhaps spending a considerable amount of shared care time with, typically, their father, who may have a very different income. My suspicion is that the surveys are primarily, if not overwhelmingly, picking up the households in which the parent with care lives. If there is a significant degree of shared care, the surveys will not be capturing what is happening to those children for the rest of the time. The issue is probably a technical one, but a note to the Committee would be helpful.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

I am happy to do that. The survey works through the random selection of postcodes, I think, so there will be no bias towards the parent with care rather than the other parent, but I am happy to provide such a note.

The main groups of children that we are talking about are Gypsy, Roma or Traveller children, children in care, children in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and asylum-seeking children. As I said, if the household does not have an address or postcode, I do not think that the surveys will pick such children up.

For asylum-seeking children, the great majority will be in households with an address or postcode, so I would expect the great majority to be included, but there is some uncertainty about precisely how many children we are talking about. A Barnardo’s report published last year estimated that since 2002 around 40,000 children in asylum-seeking families had arrived or been born in the UK and that there could be more than 100,000 children in total in the UK asylum system. We are certainly talking about quite a large group of children there, but the great majority will be in private households and will be picked up by the survey. Children in Yarl’s Wood, to take the example given by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, would not be picked up by the survey. For children not living in private households—children in Yarl’s Wood, for example, but children in care homes as well—there is not really a way to allocate household income, even if they were covered by the survey. Again, I do not think that we shall find a way of including them in the target, but they will be covered by clause 8(2)(b).

Development of the child poverty strategy will involve identification of those groups of children most at risk of being in poverty, including harder-to-reach and disadvantaged groups, and measures to help them. As we discussed in the evidence sessions last week, the well-being of many children not covered by the targets is monitored by Government and local government in other ways. For example, there are outcome and well- being measures for looked-after children who live in accommodation not covered by the surveys; there are minimum statutory standards for looked-after children in residential care; and there is a Government target to reduce the number of households living in temporary accommodation, including bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Targets are in place for a number of such groups.

Amendment 26 is designed to ensure that the weighting procedures for the survey statistics take into account under-representation in the survey of particular groups. I sympathise with the intention behind the amendment, but I hope that I can persuade the hon. Member for Northavon that it is not necessary. The main survey used to calculate child poverty rates, the family resources survey, is subject to weighting procedures, which help to ensure that the survey data accurately reflect the make-up of the population. The data are weighted on a range of variables, including housing tenure and family type. The weighting regime for the survey was reviewed comprehensively in 2005 and the results are on the Department for Work and Pensions website. In addition, the methodology used to create the survey statistics has to adhere to national statistics standards for integrity, quality and freedom from political influence. That means that regular independent quality reviews of the statistics will be carried out.

The family resources survey weighting procedures do not account directly for the possible under-representation of all at-risk groups. We correct indirectly for some of the under-representation of at-risk groups by taking account of characteristics such as household tenure and family type, which are statistically related to other characteristics of at-risk groups. It is not possible to control for all at-risk characteristics. First, it is best practice to try to limit the number of control factors that underlie the weighting procedure, because too many control totals can produce misleading results. Secondly, if few households from a given group are captured by the survey because there are relatively few such households in the country, weighting procedures will be unreliable. Thirdly, we do not know enough about the populations of some groups, such as Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people, to use weighting procedures reliably, because there is no robust total to be controlled to.

I hope that I have assured the Committee that sufficient, accurate weighting procedures are in place and that they are regularly reviewed. Amendment 26 is therefore unnecessary.

To respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North, the use of income before, rather than after, the deduction of housing costs is the subject of our next debate. The main argument for using income before housing costs is to enable straightforward comparisons with other European countries, because that is how they measure it. We had an interesting discussion this morning on how we stand compared with other EU countries. We would not be able to make that comparison if we did not use income before housing costs data. However, I emphasise that we will continue to publish both measures so that everybody can see exactly what the position is.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I welcome that response. I accept that there is shed loads of sensitivity stuff relating to the 60 per cent. of median income information at the back of the HBAI statistics. I am less confident that we know how robust the newer statistics are, such as those on persistent poverty and material deprivation. A huge amount of effort goes into the statistics that we have had for a long time. I seek reassurance that we will believe the newer statistics to be more robust when they are published more regularly. That is currently less pronounced.

I take the Minister’s point about children not in the surveys. It is welcome that the strategies are not just about the children covered by the targets. That is reassuring, provided that it has teeth. If a hypothetical Government cut benefits for asylum seekers and the welfare of children in those households diminished, it would come under the section that he referred to. If the child poverty commission has no teeth, life will go on.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

If that happened, it would be picked up by the survey because the great majority of those children are in households and will be covered like other children. It is only children in Yarl’s Wood, for example, who would not be picked up.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

That is fair. It is helpful that the Bill is not solely concerned with the target.

Finally, on under-representation, I take the Minister’s point that we do not have control totals for many of the groups. The point about inner London is probably quite important. Governments notoriously cannot count how many people live in such areas and I know that it is not straightforward to do so. Given the correlation between child poverty and living in inner London, the fact that the weighting is for Greater London, not for inner and outer London, means that the headline child poverty numbers are probably too low, albeit perhaps not by much—I do not know by how much. Will the Minister look at that again?

I appreciate the seriousness with which the Minister addressed those concerns, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I beg to move amendment 28, in clause 6, page 3, line 14, leave out subsection (2).

An audible cheer went up, Mr. Key, when we reached this substantive and important amendment. Under clause 6, the definition of “income” may include and exclude all sorts of things, but the one thing that cannot be deducted is the cost of housing. That is explicitly prohibited by the Bill. Amendment 28 would remove that prohibition and allow the child poverty commission, when drawing up the measure of poverty to target, to consider taking housing costs off. That is all it would do. It would not even oblige the commission to do so; it would just let it think about doing so.

What difference would that make? According to the latest figures, on the before-housing costs measure, 2.9 million children are living in poverty, and on the after-housing costs measure, 4 million are. The difference is huge, and the amendment goes to the nub of the issue. There are arguments for and against, and they have, conveniently, been published at the back of the document on households on lower incomes. The argument for not taking off housing costs is that if someone spends more on housing because they buy a plusher, nicer, more luxurious place, that is their choice and the cost should not be deducted because it makes their life better. If housing costs are just a proxy for quality, we should not knock them off; however, they are a real measure of need that cannot be avoided and are different in different parts of the country, so they should be knocked off.

The Minister generously told us what his answer would be when he said during the previous debate that the key argument for using the before-housing costs measure is that that is what everyone else does, so we can make international comparisons. However, no one said that we should not publish before-housing costs measures; no one said that we should not be able to compare internationally by continuing to generate before-housing costs numbers. Surely the Bill should be about the best interests of British children and should be the right target for the welfare of children in this country. The ability to make comparisons with other countries should be a secondary consideration, but we can do that anyway. Using an after-housing costs measure does not preclude international comparisons because we will calculate the numbers anyway—all that is involved is two sets of figures, one of which has housing costs knocked off. There is not even any extra effort involved.

The question is: which is the best measure of real living standards? There is a strong London dimension, as the Minister will appreciate, because average housing costs in the capital are substantially greater than elsewhere. Most people would not think that that is because of quality. People who pay high rents for overcrowded rented accommodation in central London are not having a whale of a time; they just have to find the money. Deducting the cost of housing seems to be particularly appropriate in areas where child poverty might be concentrated—for example, urban areas.

A further reason why the before-housing costs measure is not the right one to use is that, perversely, it includes housing benefit. If I lived in the same house, year after year, and rents, whether council, housing association or private, rose faster than inflation, I would be better off on the measure that the Bill proposes to use because my housing benefit would go up. How can that be right?

I hesitate to mention that a third measure is knocking around, which I have just remembered. The Johnson-Webb measure was proposed in an economist’s academic paper a while ago. It suggested that an alternative is to exclude both housing benefit and housing costs. If including housing benefit in income is a problem because it goes up when rent goes up, which makes no sense, and knocking off housing costs is not perfect because it might reflect quality, one could use a statistic that includes neither, and perhaps bring in housing in another way, perhaps in material deprivation.

There are variations, but the key point is that both sets of figures—before-housing costs and after-housing costs—will be published. That has been the case for years, and should continue. We are not precluding putting that information in the public domain, but what should future Governments be targeting?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely powerful case. May I take him back to his point about international comparisons? Is it true that because of the shortage of houses and problems with housing in this country—I will not rehash this morning’s debate—we have a particular problem with the cost of housing for those on low incomes?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Certainly, the British housing market is very different from everywhere else in western Europe. Housing impacts on people’s living standards in this country in a very particular way. It is entirely legitimate to look across Europe on a harmonised definition—I have no problem with that—but if we want to know what is happening to people’s real living standards, it does not seem right simply to ignore their housing. I have said all that I need to say on that point, and I hope that the Committee will support the amendment.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

The Minister gave us an early glimpse of what he was going to say in his response to the previous group of amendments. I recognise that we need to have a measure of poverty that we can use to draw comparisons with other EU countries. Indeed, we had that debate this morning, which was necessary. The hon. Member for Northavon and my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness are right to point out that the after-housing costs measure is probably what families focus on. They want to know how much they have to live on to cover food, clothing, heat and so on once they have paid for their accommodation. I accept what the hon. Member for Northavon says in that respect. We know that both sets of figures will be published. They will be available and child poverty lobby groups will draw attention to both sets, and particularly to the after-housing costs set.

I will listen with interest to what the Minister says. The hon. Member for Northavon makes a valid point when he says that his amendment is permissive rather than prescriptive. It would not require anything to be done; it would merely remove a prohibition from clause 6. On that basis, I think that the case for his amendment is persuasive, but I will listen to hear if the Minister has any especially good arguments up his sleeve for why we should leave the clause as it is.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

Unfortunately, my briefing does not cover the Webb-Johnson methodology so, sadly, it will be neglected in my response.

The Committee has heard what the amendment would do. We have used a before-housing costs measure of child poverty since the consultation on measuring child poverty in 2003 but, as I have already emphasised, the households below average income data series continues to present child poverty estimates using both before and after-housing costs measures of poverty, and our intention is for that to continue.

I have mentioned one of my reasons to the Committee, but there is another. The most telling consideration is that income is measured before housing costs to allow comparisons with other European countries, which measure poverty in that way. There is a dynamic in the Bill that we aim to be among the best in Europe. The target that we have set for relative poverty would place us as the best in Europe at the moment. In setting the targets—clause 6 is about interpretation of terms used in relation to targets—we should use the before-housing cost measure to enable those comparisons to be made and for us to have a sense of whether or not we are achieving a position of being the best in Europe. The hon. Member for Northavon said that we could still look at that data. However, I turn that round. We will still be able to see the after-housing cost data and make whatever use of them we wish, but in terms of the target, it is right that we compile the figures in a way that can be compared with others.

As we all know from this morning’s debate, measures of housing quality are included in the combined low income and material deprivation measure. If a child is experiencing poor housing, that will be reflected in their material deprivation score. Families who cannot afford things because they have high housing costs will be picked up in the material deprivation measure as well. The measure reflects the impact of high housing costs and a family’s ability to afford decent housing. The hon. Member for Northavon is right about the impact of high housing costs on child poverty—my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North frequently makes that point. Through the low income and material deprivation measures, we are able to track that impact because paying out a lot of money for housing curtails the ability to afford other things.

Finally, as the hon. Member for Northavon mentioned, if one deducts housing costs entirely, those who choose to pay for better quality accommodation could have their relative standard of living understated. In preparing a UK child poverty strategy, we need to consider any housing measures required to tackle child poverty, as set out in clause 8. It is right that the targets are defined as being before housing costs, for the reasons that I have set out, but people will continue to monitor what is happening on an after-housing costs basis and the data will continue to be provided to make that possible.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I am not sure that I am convinced by that. The Minister seems to be saying, “Well, don’t worry about knocking off housing costs, because we’ll pick it up some other way. We’ll pick it up through deprivation, so if people have high housing costs, the children won’t be able to go on holiday or have a new pair of shoes.” That is a pretty indirect way of picking it up, and you would not be able to disentangle the housing impact from another impact. The family might not be able to go on holiday because of other costs, so that would not identify the impact of housing uniquely. I take the Minister’s point that the after-housing costs numbers will still be published, but targets matter—as his motto would be. If one targets income before housing costs, there is not the same policy impetus to tackle the housing costs of low-income households, as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire pointed out. If income after housing costs is targeted, tackling such housing costs becomes a much more explicit policy objective because the Government will be held to account for it. What we target matters.

I am also concerned that the Minister wants to pre-empt the child poverty commission—he has great faith in it and is going to stuff it with experts—from even thinking about housing. I cannot see why he would want to stop the commission from at least looking at whether, on balance, taking off housing costs gives a better guide.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman’s flow. Were his amendment to be accepted, what would be his intention for the targets in clauses 2 to 5? What would be the practical effect of the amendment? He talked about it having a permissive character—by allowing the child poverty commission to do different things—but what does he intend to change in the targets in clauses 2 to 5.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

If we are going to create a child poverty commission, the commission should be asked. Clause 6 is about the Secretary of State making regulations, presumably on the basis of expert advice. Therefore, the child poverty commission, when deciding all the details, should be asked whether deducting housing costs is the right thing to do. It would then either reaffirm the exact targets as they stand just after housing costs, or come up with different thresholds on the basis that a slightly different thing is being measured. I have a view on what the right answer is, but that is just my opinion. There is a strong argument that what is being precluded is worth looking at, so we should not pre-empt the commission and stop it from looking. I am not saying that it should look at everything, but housing costs are so fundamental and central to people’s real living standards that the commission should be able to assess whether they should be in the target.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

May I press the hon. Gentleman a little on his point about constraining the commission? The clause specifies what can be in the targets. The child poverty commission might want to look at a range of matters, but it is right that the set target should be a before-housing costs target to make comparisons with other countries.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

We do not need a child poverty Bill with a legally binding target to make comparisons with other countries—we can do that anyway. I do not see that anything I am proposing prevents that from being done. The question is: what should we target? Clause 6(1)(c) states that regulations may provide for what is to be regarded as income, and all I am saying is that the child poverty commission should be able to advise the Secretary of State that, as the Bill stands, it cannot take off housing costs, but that it would be a better measure of living standards if it did.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The current position is that the after-housing costs numbers are published. The Minister’s main argument seems to rest on our targets having to correspond with the international comparison numbers. Surely, if it is better for this country to use after-housing costs for our target in statute, that is what we should have. We would still publish the before-housing costs numbers, which would allow the international comparisons to be made. We would have all the information we needed, and a target that best suited the country’s needs. I do not think that the Minister has really addressed that central point.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I could not have put it better. On that basis, I commend the amendment to the Committee.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I beg to move amendment 27, in clause 6, page 3, line 18, at end add:

‘and the costs associated with disability.’.

I should alert you, Mr. Key, to the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West will also seek to catch your eye on the amendment. You have probably heard enough of me, but the treatment of disability is an important issue. As we discussed in the evidence sessions, people receiving certain disability benefits to reflect additional costs may have a perverse effect on the statistics as they are currently constructed. The living standard of those people is measured by their income, which includes the benefit they get because they have extra costs, but nowhere are those costs taken into account. Those people, therefore, appear higher up the income and living standards scales than they truly are. Their promotion up the ranking is artificial, because all the benefit does is make good the costs that non-disabled households do not face.

We simply suggest that account be taken of the costs associated with disability, and in a particular way. There are two obvious ways of taking account of disability benefits. One is to exclude them. I am grateful that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in following up a question I asked in a previous Committee sitting, has supplied us with a briefing note on the impact of excluding disability benefits from the HBAI measure. In parentheses, the note suggests that five topics are covered, but marginal deduction rates do not appear anywhere in it, so I hope we can have the missing section at some point.

The analysis shows that the aggregate number of those in poverty is pretty much the same whether or not disability living allowance is excluded. The totals are not affected. I am grateful for that useful information. However, we were getting at the composition, not the totals. The commentary on the numbers precisely states that if DLA is taken out, the median income is reduced, and therefore a set of children goes out of the figures. Presumably, they are children in households where nobody is disabled. However, there is presumably another set of children who will come into the figures—children in households where there is a disabled person. Although the total may be the same, the composition may be different. I do not think we yet have information about the composition.

If one is trying to measure relative living standards, excluding DLA is closer to the truth. One argument for excluding DLA is that we would get the right children. The total may not be different, but we would include more children in households with a disabled person than we do on the current definition, and the policy response may therefore be different. That all sounds like nerdy statistical stuff, but the point is that if our poverty figures include more children in households where there is someone with a disability, we will do more about disability—it follows. We need to get the right people in the figures, and not just the right totals. Therefore, there is a case for excluding DLA.

The ministerial comment on the Government’s figures stated that if we excluded DLA and then had a take-up campaign—so that more people received DLA—it would not show in the figures. That would be a bit odd, as clearly the Government have done something about poverty and it would not be fair if that did not show in the figures. I can see the logic, but our amendment proposes to tackle the issue in a slightly different way.

We have linked amendment 27 to the process of equivalisation. At the moment, we do not quite say that in a household two people can live as cheaply as one, but rather that a second mouth does not take twice as much as the first one, so there is a scaling. We take the total household income and scale according to the number of mouths to feed, the ages and all the rest of it to get an equivalent income—to scale households with different costs. We are arguing that we should have the same process for disability. Hence, rather than exclude a piece of income that someone is getting, which is one way of doing it, when we scale different households to reflect their different costs, we recognise that households with a disabled person have additional costs. They should have a higher equivalence scale, so that we compare like with like.

I recognise that that raises complications. The equivalence scale that the Government are using in their proposed figures is incredibly crude—the OECD scale is gobsmackingly crude compared with the one the Government used formerly, which was much more refined and based on real living standards. I accept that it may be difficult to graft the costs of disability on to the OECD scale, which is horrifying in its simplicity. But we have to do something. Otherwise, the wrong children will be classified as in poverty and we will have the wrong policy response. Either we knock the income out or we take account of the costs. It is not good enough simply to say that we cannot do anything and we will just put up with figures that do not include children who are in poverty when they should be included, and vice-versa. I shall be grateful for the Minister’s response on how we can address the proper measurement of living standards of children in households with a disabled adult.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Members might remember that this was a point on which I questioned the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions during our evidence sessions last week. I think the hon. Member for Northavon has made his points well. Disability living allowance is given to offset the increased costs of disability, which are many and varied, depending on the disability. Certain types of product may need to be bought to cope with the disability, and there may be increased heating costs, extra transport costs, as public transport is not suitable, or specialised child care costs. The issue will become larger as individual budgets start to loom on the horizon.

I, too, looked at the note we had from Ministers yesterday evening. I will be grateful if the Financial Secretary can explain something that appears curious. We were told that 23 per cent. of children were in households with below 60 per cent. of median income, with DLA and attendance allowance included as income. We were then given the figure for children in households with below 60 per cent. of median income, but excluding those allowances as income. The figure actually fell by only 1 per cent. to 22 per cent., which is slightly counter-intuitive, unless I am missing something. It tends to suggest that DLA is being taken up by slightly wealthier families, and that we have a problem with take-up at the lower end of the income scale. Those figures certainly are not what I expected, and I am left rather puzzled from a policy perspective, as to what that tells us and what we should do about it.

It is really a question of being honest. I hate to use that word, and I do not imply anything negative by it, but we have to reflect the reality of people’s lives. If income is given to cope with specific extra costs, one cannot really count it as ordinary income in the way that people who are not disabled would count additional income. That should be a given across the board; it is not a party political point, but a statement of the reality of the situation. I look forward to hearing what the Financial Secretary has to say.

John Barrett (Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West)

My hon. Friend the Member for Northavon does not often leave his colleagues with much to say on such issues, so I feel like an apprentice with the master by his side.

One group of people who have been very keen on the Bill are those with a disabled child or a disabled parent in the family, because they realise that the move towards the targets will have a great impact on them. As has been mentioned, it is vital that increased costs for heating, diet, transport or child care are recognised as additional costs on the family, and that additional income from DLA or other sources should not be seen as disposable income that the family will be left with. When we consider clause 6(c), which concerns

“what is to be regarded as the income of a household”,

and when we consider what deductions are to be made, it makes perfect sense to consider the costs and the deductions that have to be made to put a family on a level playing field with all the other families who do not have a disabled person in the house. My hon. Friend’s amendment therefore makes perfect sense.

Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham)

Equivalising incomes to take account of the costs of disability is tricky, and we discussed the issue in last week’s evidence sessions. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Northavon was proposing a methodology for doing that—if so, I should be interested to know a bit more—but it is certainly a difficult issue and there is no consensus on how it should be done.

Last week, we were asked whether it is possible to determine the impact on child poverty levels of not counting DLA as income. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary then quickly produced the letter that has been mentioned. As we have heard, the figures show that there is almost no difference in the number and percentage of children who are counted as being in relative poverty using income figures that include, and exclude, DLA and attendance allowance. The hon. Member for Northavon explained why that was, but let me express it slightly differently.

Excluding DLA and attendance allowance from household income would reduce median household income. Attendance allowance and DLA are more likely to be received by families without children. There are, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West has rightly pointed out, families with children who receive DLA for those children. On the whole, however, it is more likely to be received by older people who are under state pension age and who do not have children, or whose children have grown up, whereas attendance allowance is more likely to be received by pensioner households. The effect of taking those components of income away would be to improve the relative position of households with children in the income distribution, because fewer households with children would have had their incomes reduced, and to worsen the position of pensioners, as a higher number of households’ incomes would have been reduced. That is another way of looking at the issue.

It is also worth noting that the households below average income series, where our child poverty statistics are published, is carefully reviewed. As national statistics, they have to be. The most recent review, in 2004, which is on the Department for Work and Pensions research website, addressed the issue of the extra costs of disability and how disability benefits should be treated. The review recognised that disability benefit recipients’ position in the income distribution figures is quite high. That might be a poor representation of their standard of living, but the review concluded that removing disability benefits from income would not be the solution, as it would not reflect any changes over time in the receipt of those benefits, and would then overstate the living standards of non-recipients who had extra costs.

There clearly are additional costs associated with disability but, as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire rightly pointed out, they vary significantly in level and nature between individuals. There is no general agreement on how to measure them, at least not yet, so there is no generally agreed method to equivalise income to take account of those costs. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions made the point in the evidence sessions last week that this does not mean that the extra costs of disability are not picked up by the measures in the Bill.

Once again the combined low income and material deprivation indicator comes to our aid. It allows a fuller assessment of the living assessment of those households facing particular difficulties due to high living costs such as the cost of disability because they will then have less disposable income available to meet other needs. That indicator will capture families who have an income that is higher than that captured by the relative low income target, but who still have a lower standard of living because they have additional costs related to disability or other additional costs to bear.

In developing the child poverty strategy, we will consider the evidence on which groups are likely to be most vulnerable to poverty and what measures are needed to meet their needs. Those groups are likely to include children in families with a disabled family member. The variable nature of the costs associated with disability make it difficult to equivalise income to take into account the costs of disability in the way proposed by the amendment. The hon. Gentleman has once again raised an important point. I am grateful to him for doing so but I hope that he will accept that his amendment does not give us a solution to the challenge here.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

If the amendment prompted the Department to do more work on the costs and impact of disability to assess the adequacy and coverage of disability benefit levels, that of itself would make it worthwhile. I accept that there is not a straightforward way of doing this and perhaps the work required to do it might delay the whole process, which we do not want. I notice the Minister again relies on the argument that the material deprivation indicator would pick this up. It is going to pick up disability costs and housing costs so it will take quite a fine statistician to work out what is going on in this catch-all. We need to pick these things up a bit more directly. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 7

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I beg to move amendment 48, in clause 7, page 3, leave out lines 29 to 32.

I had not planned to table the amendment, as is apparent from the numbering, but the subject arose during the evidence sessions. The amendment would remove the part of clause 7 that provides for the child poverty commission to be abolished. I must admit that I had not noticed that, which is why I had not tabled an amendment on the subject, but when we were looking at the Bill and discussing it, I suddenly realised that it gives the Secretary of State power to abolish the commission. On the face of it, that might seem reasonable: one could argue that we do not want a plethora of quangos and that once it has served its useful purpose, the commission should drift off into the sunset.

I do not think it is quite as simple as that. Tackling child poverty is a bit like running up a down escalator. If we do not do very much, we end up going backwards. We had a discussion this morning about poverty rates in Europe and it was noticeable that in all sorts of different countries with different Governments of different complexions and different social environments, overall child poverty rates are going up because there are global forces at work. Globalisation has implications for the wage structure. There are social changes going on across Europe. There are forces at work which tend to lead to greater inequality and greater child poverty. I therefore find it hard to believe that, even if we reach that happy day in 2022, for example, when we decide that the 2020 target has been met, we are not then going to want to have some sort of infrastructure for not taking our foot off the pedal at that point.

The Minister said—I paraphrase ever so slightly—that it is all very well the Finns getting 5 per cent. for a few years, but they could not keep it up, could they? Likewise, if the United Kingdom happened to reach the 10 per cent. target and so on in 2020, that is marvellous compared with where we are now, but could we keep it up and sustain it? What happens beyond the end of that period? Given that the child poverty commission is not some sprawling bureaucracy that is going to leach vast amounts of taxpayers’ money—£180,000 a year or whatever, for four meetings a year and some biscuits—it does not seem to be unduly onerous for it to have a rolling role, just as the Committee on Climate Change will go on until 2050. In other words, the bit of clause 7 that we are trying to delete makes the assumption that child poverty will be fixed somehow—that will be a box that we can tick, and we would not even have the slightest overseeing, reporting mechanism that the child poverty commission would provide.

I would like to see the child poverty commission kept going post-2020—not just because it provides jobs for academics. It is said that the poor are always with us, so we cannot afford to take our foot off the pedal. We need a body that is always there to prod and to probe on child poverty so, with the amendment, I would like to remove the ability of a future Secretary of State to abolish the child poverty commission.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

May I say for the first time today, Mr. Key, what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship?

I rise to make a couple of brief points. First, the amendment raises an interesting question. As the hon. Member for Northavon said, we could see the Bill as being about achieving the 2020 target and, clearly, the child poverty commission has a role in that. Once that target is achieved, assuming that it is, what then is the ongoing role for the child poverty commission? Is there an argument for it to be abolished? We do not believe that quangos should exist for the sake of it. We are interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that and about his defence of the Secretary of State’s ability to abolish the commission.

My second point is a technical one, which is that the amendment does not do all that it should do. It proposes the removal of clause 7(4), but subsections (5) and (6) should also be struck out. For that reason, if the hon. Gentleman intended to press the amendment to a Division, we could not support it. However, an interesting point is being made and we would be grateful to hear the Minister’s views.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr. Key.

The effect of the amendment would be to take from the Bill an order-making power, subject to the affirmative procedure, for a future Government to wind up the commission once its work is complete. I understand that the hon. Member for Northavon has concerns about how the power might be used. He would like to see a continuing role for the commission after the target date of 2020. I would like to reassure hon. Members that the power is in the Bill simply to avoid a future Government finding itself with a statutory public body that has completed its work but remains in existence because there is no ready means to bring it to an end.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire for pointing out the technical deficiencies in the amendment. I was hoping that the hon. Gentleman would tell us what Mrs. Gauke thought, but he has not done so on this occasion.

Clause 7(4)(b) clearly states that the power can only be used on a date falling after the target year. Furthermore, the explanatory notes clearly state that it is the Government’s intention to use the power only if they consider that there is no longer a role for the commission.

As we have stated before, the order-making power is subject to the affirmative procedure, which means that a future Government would need to demonstrate to Parliament that there was no longer a role for the commission. It would clearly not be appropriate to wind down the commission if the targets had not been met. All Members know that constraints on Government spending will continue into the next decade. In that context, continuing to fund a public body that has no remit after the target year would not be a sensible use of public funds.

I understand the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Northavon that the targets could be breached after 2020. However, schedule 2 places a duty on the Government to ensure that targets are met beyond the target year; if breached, it would require regulations to be made setting out the steps to meet them again. Paragraph 6 of schedule 2 allows regulations to be made after 2020 relating to the provision of advice by the commission. The Bill therefore envisages that the commission will continue to play a role after 2020, if it is considered that it can still add value.

Having pointed out the back-stop position given in schedule 2, I hope that I have satisfied the hon. Gentleman’s concern and that he will withdraw the amendment.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Having established that we need the child poverty commission to keep an eye on Government, I cannot envisage a world in which we went forward without it because we had achieved our targets. It is not clear who will be reporting post-2020 if the commission has gone and we have been meeting our targets. Who will be keeping an eye on those targets and ensuring that they are met? I assume that the Department will publish statistics, but who is to report on why the targets have not been met? That is what the commission will be doing pre-2020.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman understands that responsibility for meeting the targets and reporting on them lies with the Secretary of State. It is the commission’s responsibility to advise the Secretary of State. There will be no question about it: the Department will continue to oversee the policy.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I am trying to make the point that if a Government need advising pre-2020, why should a post-2020 Government not need advice? They may have hit a target, but it does not mean that they do not need advice. I am reassured that schedule 2 provides for the post-2020 world. I would be tempted to remove subsection (4) and leave the Government to remove subsections (5) and (6) in order to tidy things up. However, given the context of our discussions, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

This will be my second attempt to get some definition of how the Minister envisages the commission working in practice. A number of visions of how it would work were set out in witness statements and the memorandums that accompanied them. Save the Children saw it playing a strong role, active in driving the strategy forward, whereas others saw it playing a lesser role.

Both Ministers were at the Work and Pensions Committee hearing on 17 June, but we heard a rather uncertain view of the commission from them. We were told that it would be an advisory body. We were told that it would not set targets, but that that would be an important task for Government and for Parliament. We were told that it would be a high-profile organisation. However, all those views were extremely general and gave no substance to the circumstances in which Ministers envisaged it being used. It is great that, according to the Minister, it will have a budget for research—but research for what and on what occasions?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am sorry if it is not clear to the hon. Gentleman, but the commission’s role is to advise the Secretary of State. The commission will do that by considering the Government’s position in relation to meeting the targets, and it will consider the sort of content needed for a credible strategy to meet the targets. It will advise the Secretary of State and its advice will be published. Obviously, the commission will meet regularly—it is not intended that it should be called together only in exceptional or unusual circumstances. It is intended that it should maintain a watching brief throughout the period to 2020.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

There is a huge difference between a body that provides advice when asked for it by the Secretary of State, and a body that provides advice on its own initiative. Which will the commission be?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

The duty to provide advice is set out in the Bill, and it will be the Secretary of State’s duty to take account of the advice and to show that it has been taken into account. I am sorry, but I cannot understand why that is not clear to the hon. Gentleman. The duties are laid out, and the commission will fulfil its duties.

John Howell (Conservative, Henley)

I am sorry, but that is not the question I asked. It was a simple question: does the commission have the ability to initiate the right to give advice to the Secretary of State when she has not asked for it?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Yes.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I did not intend to raise this point at this time, but, given the helpful intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley, the fact is that the role of the commission is to advise Ministers. I ask this to obtain information. Will the Minister explain why she thinks it necessary to have an outside body providing policy advice? Should not Government Departments provide advice to Ministers, who are then held accountable in Parliament?

The Bill creates a distance from parliamentary scrutiny. I think that the intention behind it—this is not necessarily a criticism—may be to create transparency in respect of advice provided to Ministers. But given that we could work out a system whereby targets exist and Government Ministers are held accountable for the decisions that they take, why is it necessary to have an entirely separate body?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

It is the responsibility of the Secretary of State to establish a strategy that will achieve the targets and to work to achieve the targets. In doing so, the Secretary of State will draw on all the advice from her officials on which she normally draws. At the same time, because of significant public interest in child poverty, and following the consultation that we have conducted over the past few months, it was decided to establish a child poverty commission to ensure that the best independent advice could be given to the Secretary of State, drawing on people of exceptionally high quality, knowledge and expertise in the field.

This is an extremely important priority for the Government. That is why we believe that it is important to have transparency in the whole process, so that all those who are concerned about and interested in it will be able to see all the factors that have been taken into account, and to determine whether things have been done properly.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I am struggling to see where in the paragraph headed “Provision of advice by Commission” in schedule 1 it explicitly states that the commission can give advice to the Secretary of State.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

Clause 9.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I am informed by my hon. Friend that I will see the answer if I look at clause 9. I shall now sit down with no more ado.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

This has been a useful debate. On the Minister’s comments about the people nominated to sit on the commission, have she and the Department given any thought to the type of individual who will be nominated? She said that nominees will be people of distinction—we take that as read. Does she envisage that there will be some people involved in fighting poverty on the front line of their organisations who take a hands-on approach—perhaps people such as Edna Speed, who came before the Committee—or does she envisage that the commission will be entirely staffed by local academics and people with a policy or research background? Would it be useful to have a mix of the two? I think it is important that we get a feel for the thoughts of the Minister regarding the balance of expertise on the commission.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

If the hon. Gentleman turns to paragraph 1(4) of schedule 1, he will see the wide range of experience and knowledge that we will look for when making appointments to the commission. We will not look simply for policy and academic researchers, albeit their skills are valuable, but for people who work with children and families that are experiencing poverty.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I was perhaps not helped by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire. The Minister said that the commission will be able to provide advice to the Secretary of State at its own behest. That does not seem to appear in clause 9 or schedule 1. Clause 9 states:

“In preparing a UK strategy, the Secretary of State must request the advice of the Commission”

and in schedule 1:

“The Commission must comply with any request made by the Secretary of State...Advice given by the Commission under either of those sections must contain the reasons for the advice.”

It continues:

“As soon as reasonably practicable after giving advice under either of those sections, the Commission must publish the advice”.

As ever, one must look carefully at the detail of the legislation to ensure that the Government are genuinely setting up an independent body of experts that can, when it sees fit and for reasons that it judges to be suitable, make public advice to the Secretary of State and try to trigger change.

It is not clear to me—I could be wrong, and perhaps the Minister will reassure me—that the answer she gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Henley is exactly what is included in the Bill.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am sorry if I was not clear. Let me try to reassure hon. Members on this point.

As has been noted, the Secretary of State must request advice when preparing or revising the strategy. The Secretary of State can seek advice at any other time. The commission will not provide advice to its own time scale, but will do so in a timely manner to enable the Secretary of State to fulfil her duties.

That is a different point from the question whether the advice is genuinely independent. Given the recruitment of people with independent experience, the transparency of the process and the fact that the advice will be published, it will be clear that the commission has a proper degree of independence.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I think that this is a genuinely useful debate. We are assuming that the commission will speak with one voice and give united advice. What happens if there is a difference of view within the commission—perhaps a majority view with a significant minority view? Will there be provision for the members of the commission who have a minority view to make that view known? I do not see why that should not be possible, and it would be helpful if the Minister said something encouraging about that. There can be minority reports in Select Committees, and it happens in the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. If the minority disagrees with the majority decision, we are able to see that in the minutes. Does the Minister favour the greatest possible transparency, to ensure that if the commission is not unanimous, the full range of views is made available to the public?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

The point would be covered by the terms of reference. In practice, we will have a group of people who might have differences in emphasis. The parallel with the Monetary Policy Committee is not quite right, as that body discusses one lever that is designed to achieve monetary policy objectives. In tackling child poverty, we can have a range of policy options.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

As I was saying before the Division, the parallel with the Monetary Policy Committee is not a good one, because while it is solely focused on one objective and one target, this is obviously a more complex arena. We are making it clear that we are drawing on the expertise of a lot of people, who will be able to contribute on various different policy levers of which Ministers will want to avail themselves. I do not think that anybody realistically thinks that the targets that we are setting out in the Bill can be achieved solely through one type of policy response. I hope that it is clear in paragraphs 13 and 14 of schedule 1 that the commission will regulate its own proceedings, so we are not prescribing now precisely how it should do its work.

I should like to make a final point about the qualities of people, particularly the chairman of the commission. A good chairman seeks not to stifle debate, but to draw creatively on the different contributions of the members of a commission, and in doing so to build a consensus when possible. Certainly, they do not seek to provoke disagreement. The commission is not intended as a debating chamber; it is intended to be a body that formulates advice for the Secretary of State. Of course, on occasion, people might lay a different emphasis on aspects of that advice. In such instances, it would be interesting for people to know that, and that would be reasonable.

Schedule 1

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I beg to move amendment 9, in schedule 1, page 16, line 12, at end insert—

‘(1A) The appointment of the chair under sub-paragraph (1)(a) must be approved by a resolution of the House of Commons within three months of the appointment.

(1B) Before appointing a chair under subparagraph (1)(a), the Secretary of State must consult the Treasury, Work and Pensions, and Children, Schools and Families Committees of the House of Commons, or their successors.’.

The amendment was tabled before the recess, when little did I realise that the issue of consultation with Select Committees about appointments would become quite so topical. I am attempting to achieve two things with the amendment. First, I want to strengthen the position of Parliament with regard to the commission by enabling greater parliamentary scrutiny. The Government might look on that favourably, as the Prime Minister, in his first statement as Prime Minister on 4 July 2007, argued for greater parliamentary involvement in appointments. Indeed, he made similar remarks when still Chancellor of the Exchequer, for example on the “Andrew Marr Show” in January 2007.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I welcome this effort to give some parliamentary oversight. My colleagues and I on the Children, Schools and Families Committee were dismayed that the Secretary of State for that Department dismissed the recommendation—or non-recommendation—of the Committee on the day that that advice was made public. In fact, if I am not mistaken, he released it to the press the day before. What confidence can we have that any real parliamentary say would stem from the amendment? Did my hon. Friend think of going further and insisting on one Select Committee having power of veto over the appointment?

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

As I said, the amendment was drafted and submitted before the summer recess and recent events. My hon. Friend brings some relevant experience to the matter. The drafting of the amendment could be improved, and perhaps would need to be strengthened. I had assumed that Parliament and the Executive would be able to work co-operatively on such matters. Perhaps I was being na誰ve, or perhaps the recent events have been exceptional and future Secretaries of State would not act in such a way—I do not know; I am speculating. The row over the appointment of the Children’s Commissioner at least highlighted the fact that Parliament wishes to have its voice heard on some of these major public appointments. Perhaps when creating new appointment procedures, we should bear in mind the need to involve Parliament. It is good that Parliament can be independent in these areas.

That brings me to the second argument in favour of the proposals in amendment 9: they would provide greater credibility to the position of chair of the commission. That might not necessarily be the right approach, however. I would like to press the Minister on a wider question about the chair and the child poverty commission that arises from our previous debate. The commission will be an advisory body that has to deal with a complex set of indicators and potential policy levers. Is it right that it is an outside body? I support the independence of the Bank of England, and the Monetary Policy Committee has, by and large, worked but, as the Minister says, it is one tool that deals with one particular target. Child poverty targets are more complicated, and there is a question as to whether it is right to have a strong advisory body that is independent of the Government. If we are to have such a body, the proposal in the amendment would strengthen it. We could have hearings in front of Select Committees. There would be votes in Parliament and the opportunity to debate the appointment and scrutinise the qualities of the chair to a greater extent. That route would be more likely to result in the chair having a higher profile and being a more substantial figure in public life, which would strengthen the profile and credibility of the child poverty commission.

As I said, I have a slight reservation about the need for a separate body when developing policy, but if we are to have one, why not make it as strong and powerful as possible? Amendment 9 would be helpful in achieving that, as well as strengthening Parliament’s position in that area.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr. Key, although given the number of interventions I have made, you might feel that I have already done so on a number of occasions.

I support the sentiments that lie behind the amendment. If we want the body to be independent, it is important that the chair should indeed face proper procedure and parliamentary oversight and approval before taking up the role. However, like my hon. Friend, I doubt whether it is appropriate in such a complex area of policy for democratically elected politicians, who are accountable to their electorate, to sub-contract policy making and the prioritisation of various measures that are required to tackle child poverty to a quasi-independent commission. The Government of the day should be responsible for getting the balance right between, for instance, the use of cash transfers to ensure that the targets are met in the short term, and ensuring that there are incentives to work and priorities for public expenditure in areas such as education, employment and skills.

I remain deeply cynical about the origins of the Bill. I cannot help feeling that it was brought about because the Government were embarrassed by the fact that they would be heading into a general election next year having failed to meet their child poverty target in 2010. So what better way of sucking in those issues when campaigning other than to do every last thing that they could to meet that target and talk about some grand Bill that would eradicate poverty in the long term? Given the discipline of my Front Bench and its focus on doing the right thing, we have always resisted temptation and the Government’s hope of an artificial division. What would better have suited a failing Labour Government than to have got the Conservatives to vote against a child poverty Bill? What an excellent dividing line that would have been from the Government’s political point of view, even if it did not serve the best interests of children who live in poverty?

I do not think that we should have a child poverty commission, because the Government should take full responsibility and account for themselves to the electorate, but if they intend to set up a commission, we need to ensure that it is accountable to Parliament. It must not be just a halfway house with most of the people who sit on it having been appointed by the Secretary of State, while it is claimed that it has genuine independence.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I enjoyed that supportive contribution. When I first read the amendment, I assumed that it had been tabled in the light of recent events. It is particularly prescient and I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire on anticipating what was coming down the track and tabling the amendment, with which my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West and I have a lot of sympathy.

In a sense, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness asked a perfectly reasonable question about the point of a child poverty commission. One of its principal points is to be an expert pain in the backside—I do not mean an expert at being a pain in the backside, but a group of experts who, because of their expertise, can be a pain in the backside by knowing what is going on, advising on the words to be used, and reporting on why things are happening, what is not working and what needs to be done. We might think that officials were supposed to do that, because part of the Bill is about ensuring that successive Governments do something about child poverty. However, while officials might say, “Minister, we are not doing enough about child poverty,” we would never know because such exchanges would be a private conversation. In a sense, the child poverty commission would turn such issues into a public conversation and allow us to listen in on it and perhaps stimulate greater effort. I therefore have slightly more support for the purpose of the child poverty commission than the hon. Gentleman.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

The Environmental Audit Committee has the Sustainable Development Commission report to it each year. The commission tells the Committee what progress has been made on central Government delivering on their emissions reduction targets—this was before the Committee on Climate Change came along. It reported in public, and a glossy, expensive brochure was produced year after year, yet even the Department responsible for the policy centrally saw an increase in the carbon footprint of its own central offices. I have no faith in the ability of such a commission to make a real difference, especially one that is poorly funded and with no research skills, like the one proposed.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

The analogy that the hon. Gentleman draws is interesting. I think that Jonathon Porritt has been the chair of the Sustainable Development Commission. Because of that title, when he said things to the media, it was reported as, “The Government’s adviser says”, not just, “A guy from the green group says”. I agree that there has not been enough progress and that the mechanism has not been as effective as it should have been.

Returning to the amendment, if we as parliamentarians can help to ensure that whoever is appointed to the role—who may or may not survive in post longer than the Secretary of State—is an expert and a pain in the backside, in a constructive sort of way, that would be a good thing. If that is the case, I shall lend my support to the amendment.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I welcome the fact that Members are so interested in the appointment of the chair of the child poverty commission. The Government’s view is that we should have an open and transparent process. I should like to begin by saying something about the way in which we intend the appointments to be made, and then move on to the issues that have been raised, particularly by the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire in amendment 9.

I assure hon. Members that the appointment of the chair, and indeed all appointments to the commission, will be made with the utmost care, in accordance with the principles set out in the code of practice for public appointments, which is published by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The code is underpinned by seven principles derived from the work of the Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life. They include openness and transparency, appointment on merit, independent scrutiny, ministerial responsibility and proportionality.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

Will the Minister give the Committee some idea of the time frame for appointments, assuming that all goes well with this Bill? When does she anticipate that the members of the committee will be appointed?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the Secretary of State has an obligation to produce a strategy quite soon after Royal Assent. Obviously, it would be very helpful indeed if the commission was in place before the strategy was produced. One of the disadvantages of going down the path that the hon. Gentleman proposes is that it would be more difficult for us to hit all those target deadlines.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

As the Minister says, the Secretary of State must publish a strategy—I think that that has to be done within 12 months of the Bill being passed. I assume, therefore, that it will be published quite late in 2010. Is she prepared to give us an estimate of the month in which she would expect the appointments to be made? To put it another way, does she anticipate that the appointments will be made before early May next year?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but we have not got quite as far in the detailed planning as he imagines that we have, so I cannot answer that question.

Let me go back to the process that we are intending to use. We have full confidence that the process will ensure that all appointments to the commission are made fairly and in an open manner, and that candidates are selected on merit against criteria published at the start of the appointment process. Those criteria will be based on the provision in paragraph 1(4) of schedule 1 that requires the Secretary of State to aim for a commission that has knowledge and experience of child poverty policy and research, and work with families.

The entire process will be overseen by an independent person approved by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments to ensure that it fully complies with its principles. That should avoid any suggestion that the chair and other members will be beholden to Ministers, political parties, stakeholders or special interest groups.

Hon. Members will have noted the principle that it is Ministers who should have final responsibility for making the appointments. That is right because it preserves the lines of accountability. The point about accountability is one of the key reasons why I will be urging the hon. Gentleman not to press his amendment. As it is the Secretary of State who will be accountable to the House for the child poverty strategy, it is appropriate that it is the Secretary of State who appoints the members of the body responsible for advising her on its content. If I might say so, I think that the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness is being slightly inconsistent by arguing that there is no point in having a commission, because it will be a totally powerless body and, at one and the same time, that it is a body over which Parliament should have control. Those two propositions are not entirely consistent.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

My only point was to be helpful to those who appear to be in the majority who wish to set up such a commission. If such a commission is to be set up, the Minister is absolutely right to say that it is about accountability, and what better way for an independent advisory body to be accountable than to be accountable to Parliament, rather than to a Secretary of State?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

The point—I thought that we had established this in the debate on clause 7—is that the Secretary of State is responsible for hitting the targets. The Secretary of State is responsible for the strategy and for taking decisions, and is answerable to Parliament. She is therefore appointing independent advisers to facilitate the production of a strategy to enable her to fulfil her duties as effectively as possible.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Will the Minister give way?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am sorry, but I am not going to give way again at this juncture.

There is also the question of proportionality. There are many thousands of public appointments, and it is very rare indeed for the House to have powers of final approval. An example of the type of post where the House has a final say is on the appointment of people to the Electoral Commission. That is because they must be fully independent of Ministers and answerable only to Parliament. That is not the case with the poverty commission.

The amendment would also require the Secretary of State to consult the relevant Committees of the House before appointing the chair. As set out in the Government’s response to the Liaison Committee’s report on pre-appointment hearings, the Government believe that it would be impractical and disproportionate to subject all public appointments to pre-appointment scrutiny by Select Committees. Therefore, as stated in the 2008 White Paper, “Governance of Britain: Constitutional Renewal”, the Government believe that pre-appointment hearings should focus on posts in which Parliament and the public have a particularly strong interest. Examples include posts that play a key role in protecting the public interest or holding the Executive to account, as well as the post of those who are responsible for the appointments process itself.

I point out to hon. Members who raised the issue of the Children’s Commissioner that there is not a precise parallel. The remit of the Children’s Commissioner is to promote the interests of children, whereas the role of the child poverty commission is an advisory one. The Children’s Commissioner has statutory and other powers that the child poverty commission will not have.

David Gauke (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire)

I must admit that I have never really fully understood the role of the Children’s Commissioner. Can the Minister elaborate on the powers of the Children’s Commissioner?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

The Children’s Commissioner has responsibility to oversee the condition of children in England. The powers of the Children’s Commissioner for England are slightly different to those of the Children’s Commissioners for Scotland, for Wales and for Northern Ireland. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Children’s Commissioner can take up individual cases. In England, the Children’s Commissioner simply takes a view on overall policy. The role is slightly different in England, but it is emphatically not a purely advisory role—that is the position of the child poverty commission.

Therefore, we do not believe that, even on a pilot basis, it would be appropriate to subject the appointment of the chair of the child poverty commission to a pre-appointment hearing. Of course, I entirely accept that Parliament is extremely interested in the work of the child poverty commission. Of course, the Government have no control, or power, over the Select Committees, who are free at all times to invite whoever they choose to give evidence. One can well imagine, after the appointments have been made, and after the commission has been set up and embarked on its work, that it would be very sensible for the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, the Treasury Committee, or even the Children, Schools and Families Committee, to call members of the child poverty commission to give evidence. They will be free to do that. The amendment tabled by the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire is not practical or necessary, nor would it significantly enhance the role of Parliament in the policy area of child poverty.

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.