Child Poverty Bill
12:00 pm
Charlotte Pickles: Absolutely not. That was in no way what I said just then. I said that by raising benefits, you are not going to pull that child out of poverty. We have an entire report that makes numerous recommendations about how you could get people off an addiction to drugs or alcohol. We are saying that the priority in that situation has to be first ensuring that that child is living in a safe family environment, which is unlikely if a parent is addicted to drugs or alcohol, and secondly that you need to get the parent off drugs and alcohol. I do not think that in any way the solution is found by saying, “Let’s take away money”, but rather by saying, “Let’s have a proper, real, meaningful intervention, which is going to transform lives, rather than creating dependency and relying on maintenance.”