Child Poverty Bill
12:00 pm
Mike Brewer: I welcome the individual things in the Bill, but I question whether you need all 650 MPs to sit round and talk about it for something to come about. Why do you need an Act of Parliament to do it? Why can’t the Government just say, as they do at the moment, “We’re going to have an annual report on poverty and we’re going to measure progress by these indicators”? Ultimately, what counts is the strategy of the Government, or future Governments. This Government said that they were serious about child poverty. They had high-profile targets and an annual report, but still missed the target. I do not see why an Act of Parliament would change that.