Clause 15

Part of Child Poverty Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 3:00 pm on 29 October 2009.

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Photo of Graham Stuart Graham Stuart Conservative, Beverley and Holderness 3:00, 29 October 2009

No, for the reason that no previous Government have set targets in statute. I do not believe that it is right to do so. There are a number of reasons why, but I shall give him one, because I think that that will suffice: it had been a fundamental constitutional principle that one Parliament could not bind another. After a general election, when a democratically elected Government comes in, they will doubtless have to take some very tough decisions indeed, following the wreckage of the UK economy by the Financial Secretary and his friends; we can all imagine that.

It is impossible to imagine that a court of law would intervene and say, “This statute was passed by a previous Government when they were still spending money like it was going out of fashion, before we had our credit withdrawn by the international bond markets. So I’m afraid your ability to maintain basic public services and the armed forces, and all other duties, have to be set aside, because there happens to be a statute in place specifically for this one area of social policy.” Do pensioners’ problems have to go to the wall while we ensure that the issue of relative poverty is dealt with, because that one issue was plucked out by a Government desperately flailing around in their final months, trying to find a dividing line between them and the Opposition? Is that to be the case? I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that it is not.

Moving on to my amendment, my timing is probably fortuitous. A fiscal responsibility Bill proposed in the Prime Minister’s party conference speech on 29 September will

“impose a legally binding obligation on the Government to reduce public borrowing.”

Notwithstanding the fact that the Government have introduced the Climate Change Act 2008 and want to introduce this Bill, they are introducing another legally binding measure, which apparently means that public borrowing has to be reduced. My 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 that obligation, as it would be rather peculiar if they did not.

In addition to the proposed fiscal responsibility obligations, the Government are bound by law to meet several other statutory targets. I will quickly go through some examples. There is a legally binding target to ensure that the net UK carbon account for 2050 is at least 80 per cent. lower than the 1990 baseline, and a duty to eradicate fuel poverty in all households by 2015. The Government also propose legislating for a legal obligation to ensure that the target for expenditure on official UK development assistance amounts to 0.7 per cent. of gross national income. This Government love to take things that we all devoutly wish to see and turn them into law, and they then expect that that will make those things happen. All those targets will involve additional public spending, at a time when the Government will be compelled, either by law or by bond markets, to drastically—I should say, “drastically to”; I hate split infinitives—reduce public borrowing. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said in 2006—this has been frequently quoted in our proceedings—that an additional £4.3 billion will have to be spent on tax credits and benefits if we are to meet the 2010 target.

We need clarity on the priority of targets if the Bill is to have any credibility, notwithstanding the fact that I do not think that it has any. That need was highlighted by the judicial review brought by Friends of the Earth and Help the Aged against the Government for failing to keep their legal duty, as the hon. Member for Copeland will be aware, to eradicate fuel poverty under the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000. “It is an open-and-shut case”, the hon. Member for Copeland, or even the hon. Member for Northavon, may think. The Government’s defence was that it was not

“reasonably practicable to take all of the measures that would be required to eradicate fuel poverty, as...the resources are not available to pay for them all at the present time given the money available.”

I say to any child poverty group outside the House that they should bear that in mind before they accept any promises from this failing Government.

The court agreed with the Government, and dismissed the claim that they had breached their duty under the 2000 Act on the grounds that they had taken budgetary considerations into account. The judgment continued, and said that the Government

“did not assume a statutory duty to achieve the desired results, whatever the cost...It is open to Government to have regard to its overall budget and the other calls upon its resources in deciding what steps to take in implementation of the strategy, including its requirement that efforts should be made to achieve the 2010 and 2016 targets as far as reasonably practicable.”

The purpose of my amendment is to tease out the issue and ask about the series of competing legal duties, all of which have been enacted by this Government with scant regard for legal enforceability and the need for the  Government to be honest about what they can and cannot deliver, particularly for the most vulnerable in our society.