New Clause 2
Child Poverty Bill
5:45 pm
Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
To be clear about the figures I am using, the question I asked was, “What would be the income of a couple with children wholly dependent on benefits?” In other words, the bit of their income that the state controls. That is not to do with wages. If they are earning, as the hon. Lady rightly says, there can be quite big jumps as soon as they do 16 hours or whatever it happens to be. My point is that there will always be families with children, couples and lone parents wholly dependent on benefits and tax credits. It would be odd of the Government to set benefit and tax credit payments below their own poverty line, when they are passing legislation to eradicate child poverty. I do not see how those measures can sit together. That is linked to the minimum income standard argument that we will discuss later.
I have discussed a theoretical situation with a hypothetical lone parent and couple. The actual situation is much worse. Half of the children in poverty are in non-working households; 30 per cent. have non-working lone parents and 19 per cent. are in non-working two-parent households. That means that almost 1.5 million of the 2.9 million children in poverty are wholly dependent on benefits or tax credits. Even if we could deal with the 1.5 million children from working households who are in poverty by providing better child care, education, training and jobs, we would be left with more than 1.2 million children below the Government’s poverty line and would fail to meet our 2020 target.
No Governments have set benefit and tax credit rates high enough to lift people clear of poverty. I have moved from the hypothetical to the real: 30 per cent. of children in poverty have lone parents. There is no reason why they are in poverty other than the level of benefits and tax credits.