Clause 4
Child Poverty Bill
4:00 pm
Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
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.