Clause 1
Child Poverty Bill
10:30 am
Andrew Selous (Shadow Minister, Work and Pensions; South West Bedfordshire, Conservative)
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.