Clause 7
Child Poverty Bill
5:30 pm
Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
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.