New Clause 2
Child Poverty Bill
5:45 pm
Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
This is where new clause 4 comes in. I am saying that, if the poverty thresholds and the targets in the Bill mean anything, we should at least think about those thresholds when setting benefit rates. We patently are not doing that. It would cost a lot of money—I do not know how much because the numbers are quite complicated, but it would be billions of pounds, and I am certainly not committing to that—but if we set benefit rates each year without thinking about the thresholds on which we are legislating, we might as well give up as we are not going to achieve our goals. That is my point.