Clause 15
Child Poverty Bill
3:00 pm
The Fiscal Responsibility Bill proposed in the Prime Minister’s Party Conference speech of 29 September 2009 will impose a legally binding obligation on the Government to reduce public borrowing. The amendment seeks clarification as to whether the Secretary of State, in preparing a UK strategy, and the Commission, in considering advice, will need to take into account this obligation.
As ever, it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Key. The amendment follows on neatly from the points made rightly, albeit naively, by the hon. Member for Northavon; the credence that he gave to the Government’s promises was overly great. Before I deal with the specifics of my amendment, I want to focus more on statutory targets. What do statutory targets mean? I asked the Library to investigate the history of statutory targets, and it duly produced a note on the subject. I wanted to find out whether they had a history, because it has always seemed manifestly absurd to put targets in statute, whether in this Bill or in the Climate Change Act 2008.
Time and again in debate on the Climate Change Bill, Ministers boasted of a legal duty on Government to deliver. When I looked into the history of statutory targets, I found that no Government prior to this one had ever put targets into statue, at least according to the House of Commons Library. Many Back Benchers had come forward with private Members’ Bills that suggested doing exactly that, but they always had to change the wording to refer to a provision for setting targets, so as to give the Government of the day the flexibility to respond in the right way. The Library came through with a list of the provisions that have been made. The Water Act 2003 has concentration of fluoride targets, the Housing Act 2004 has energy efficiency of residential accommodation targets, and there are other targets that have been put together by the Government. It is a relatively novel thing to do.
If one looks for legal advice on such matters, one finds the article by Harriet Townsend on the Climate Change Act 2008. That goes to the point of what the hon. Member for Northavon said: what enforceability is there? As he said, why bring genuine child poverty charities and campaigners to Parliament and make them believe that if the agenda, which they rightly say should be more central to Government policy making, is put in statute, the justice that they have long sought for children in poverty can be had? What is the point if it turns out that we are talking about sleight of hand, or Government posturing, with no enforceability mechanisms whatever for those who feel that they had been made a binding promise, and who believed that it was binding by dint of being in statute?
Harriet Townsend’s paper on the Climate Change Act 2008, which is well worth reading because of its relevance to the matter at hand, effectively says that she cannot see that any duty set in statute can be enforceable. So far, the only cases that have come before a court, which I will come to in a moment, have resulted in a declaration only. I feel that a fraud is being perpetuated at the heart of the Bill. It is a fraud on all those who campaign for and care most about child poverty, because the statutory targets set in the Bill are not, in fact, enforceable.