Schedule 1

Part of Child Poverty Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 6:30 pm on 27 October 2009.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Steve Webb Steve Webb Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions 6:30, 27 October 2009

I beg to move amendment 49, in schedule 1, page 17, line 20, at end insert

“The sums under 9(c) shall include resources to commission independent research as required.”.

I am reflecting on my alternative career, and in that context it is important that the child poverty commission has a research project. I do not have one yet.

The amendment deals with the child poverty commission’s facilities and role. We propose that the sums that the Secretary of State will provide to the commission under schedule 1(9)(c) should include sums for research. Indeed, the impact assessment on the Bill inserts a notional figure, but we have not so far had any assurance from the Ministers that that funding will actually be made available. The reason we are trying to beef up the commission is slightly informed by our previous discussion, because it is currently—it would be pejorative to describe it as an academic scavenger—relying on what is lying around. If there is some useful, relevant research, a commission of 14 good men and women and true will presumably know about it, will have read it, or will even have done it themselves. However, they will be performing an advisory role in a new area, because while some of the definitions used to measure poverty have been in use for a long time, other areas are quite fresh, such as some of the stuff on material deprivation, the index, the weighting and so on; they are fairly new. We certainly did not do it like that when I was a lad.

I do not think that all the research that one may require is lying around. If the child poverty commission is to have some power of initiative to ensure that it can provide the proper advice to the Secretary of State, it ought to be able to commission a limited amount of research and not simply hope that it exists. If the commission identifies a gap in knowledge, it would be appropriate for it to have a limited budget to do something about it.

There is a contrast between the child poverty commission and the Committee on Climate Change, which has a budget this year of £3.4 million. I think that the child poverty commission’s budget is about 5 per cent. of that figure. Within the CCC’s budget, research and consultancy is £750,000. Climate change is an awfully big and important issue, but one would think that child poverty was, too. We simply seek an assurance that research would be part of the commission’s budget. Schedule 1(4)(b) suggests that the members of the commission should have experience in, or a knowledge of, research in connection with child poverty. That is obviously partly about knowing what other people have done and what the members themselves have done, but one also assumes that if people who know about research are appointed to a commission, they will be well placed to make good use of limited public funds to commission relevant research.

The £200,000 figure in the impact assessment is not outrageous for a research budget, and would enable the commission to pay for some tightly focused work that would enable it to do its job properly—to provide high quality advice to the Secretary of State in a new and developing area. I am sure, therefore, that the Minister will welcome our attempt to enhance the commission’s ability to assist Ministers in their work, and will agree to the amendment.