Clause 8
Child Poverty Bill
9:30 am
Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
Good morning, Mr. Key. I have been musing this morning as to what sin you might have committed in a previous life to have to endure another of our sittings. It is nevertheless good to see you in the Chair.
Clause 8 has a slight feeling of a Christmas tree about it; we have all come along with our baubles. A bit of me almost wants to strip the tree down and perhaps even take out subsection (5), on which we are hanging those baubles. Either we have a strategy that is about child poverty and we let the Secretary of State get on with it, or we have a complete shopping list of everything that matters to do with the welfare of children—and in the spirit of the debate we have added a couple of our own. However, what we have is neither fish nor fowl—we have some things that matter to children but not others.
We have tabled amendment 30, which is about transport, and amendment 47 on child care. We note that the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North wanted to add a provision on child care in a different place in the Bill. We can have a high-tempered debate about where it should go, but we would be happy if amendment 50 were accepted. I shall explain why, if we are going to have a Christmas tree, we would like to hang the baubles of transport and child care on it, but I wonder whether the Ministers will reflect on whether picking some things and not others might create the wrong outcome.
It is like our discussion about targets when we started our consideration. Once we start saying that something matters because it is in legislation, is there not a risk that, when drawing up the strategy, we look at the things that are listed, but ignore disability, ethnicity, asylum-seeking children and all the other things that we would like to add? I hope that the Financial Secretary will give us a flavour of why some things and not others are included and reflect on whether specifying particular things makes sense. If we are going to do that, transport is clearly an important issue and it links to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness on rurality, because transport and rurality are closely linked.