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21 Jan 2010 : Column GC175
Grand Committee
Thursday, 21 January 2010.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall): I remind the Committee that if there is a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes from the time of the Division Bell.
Child Poverty Bill
Bill Main Page
Copy of the Bill
Explanatory Notes
Amendments
Committee (2nd Day)
2 pm
Clause 6 : Interpretation of terms used in relation to targets
9: Clause 6, page 3, line 9, at end insert-
"(ba) the circumstances in which a child living in communal accommodation may be regarded as living in a qualifying household;"
Lord Morris of Handsworth: Let me say at the outset that I welcome the provision of income-related target-setting provided for in the Bill. However, I regret that the income targets will be related to children only in a narrowly defined definition of "qualifying households". Amendment 9 seeks therefore to widen the definition of the "qualifying household".
The definition as provided for is set out in the draft statutory instrument child poverty target 2010. The draft regulation requires a qualifying household to have a postcode and to receive no more than 50 items of mail per day. That is, in my view, a perverse provision, because it does not in any way reflect the reality of life in modern Britain. The qualifying criteria start with a set of stereotypical assumptions that we are all part of a nuclear family with 2.5 children living in white, middle-class suburbia. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To make my point, I can do no better than to quote the summary of the scrutiny report on the Bill by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member:
"The Government have provided sufficient information to show that children who live in communal accommodation or who live in accommodation without a postcode, such as Gypsy and Romany children, are unlikely to be encompassed by the definition of children in qualifying households".
What the Joint Committee is really saying is that if you link the principle of qualifying households to a postcode, Gypsy and Romany children, for example, and many other groups, will be left out. The definition of qualifying household means that children in communal accommodation such as children's homes, children in bed and breakfast accommodation, Traveller children and children of asylum seekers in detention centres will not be included.
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To date, when challenged on the point of the limitation on the qualifying household, the Government's response is that a wider definition is not practicable and would cost too much. On that point of cost and practicability, the Joint Committee says:
"We are not persuaded by the justification provided by the Government which rests on the costs and impracticability of surveying children who do not live in qualifying households. We recommend the inclusion in the Bill of a target or targets that would apply to children not living in the defined qualifying households".
Indeed, the Joint Committee states in its report that the use of targets which exclude large groups of children from the criteria of qualifying households is potentially indirectly discriminatory and, as such, it questions whether the Bill is compatible with Article 14 of the human rights convention. The Government, in response, indicated that it is not discriminatory because the qualification would be set out in qualifying statutory instruments. I have already quoted from the draft instrument, and it does not in fact take the Government's argument any further. The draft instrument says that it is a postcode with less than 50 items of post on any one day. So I believe that that is the end of the Government's argument that they will be looking at secondary legislation to define the statutory qualifying household.
In conclusion, the amendment seeks to widen the definition to include children in communal accommodation or communal households, as we believe that they have as much right to be included as any other children. They have not taken any action to put themselves in that situation and therefore they should not be excluded. It is on that basis that I seek to widen the definition of qualifying household. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I thought that it might be for the convenience of the Committee if I were to group my Amendment 26 with those of the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, in order to expedite our progress a little-something that I am sure we are all interested in doing. I have included it in this group because I share the noble Lord's concerns, and my amendment partly addresses the same concern as that held by the noble Lord, Lord Morris.
Amendment 26 is intended to kill two birds with one stone. The definition of a "child" in Clause 25 currently excludes 16 and 17 year-olds, which means that vulnerable young people may not be covered by the scope of the UK child poverty strategy. In addition, as the noble Lord, Lord Morris, pointed out, children living in communal accommodation will not have their income measured and so may not be included. I believe that all children and young people up to the age of 18 should benefit from these strategies, so I have tabled Amendment 26 to that end. However, I have addressed a different part of the Bill from the one addressed by the noble Lord. My amendment relates to Clause 8, where the strategies appear.
The effect of my amendment would be, first, that 16 and 17 year-olds who are in danger of living in poverty, such as those not in education, employment or training, care leavers and those living independently who are very poorly paid, would all benefit. Secondly, the UK's strategy would be in accordance with the
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We cannot assume that young people not in education or training will be supported by their families, or indeed that their families will be in a position to do so. Of course, by definition, we cannot assume that about young care leavers either, as they may not have a family to support them. Young workers receive a lower national minimum wage, and in future they will have to take part in education or training for part of the week, so their earning time will be further restricted. Therefore, all these three groups are very susceptible to poverty and I need not repeat the evidence, which the Minister well knows.
The Minister kindly told us in a meeting that he offered us that the strategies in Clause 8 are the means by which the Government will include these people-that is, those outside the Bill's definition of a child and outside the household surveys. Therefore, I have chosen to make a small but significant alteration to the wording of Clause 8 in order to make it quite clear that the strategies developed under that clause must include all children as defined by the UN convention.
One might think that I should also have proposed similar amendments to Clause 10 relating to Scottish children and Clause 11 relating to children from Northern Ireland. Indeed, depending on the Minister's reply, I well may still do so. However, I believe that the Assembly for Wales has taken care of all children in Wales.
I also looked at the clauses relating to local authorities in Part 2 and found the wording to be similar to the wording elsewhere in the Bill. Clauses 21 and 22 mention "child poverty needs assessments" and "child poverty strategy". I assume the same under-16-only definition applies to the meaning of "child" in those clauses.
Also, Clause 24 refers to measurements of households, which concerns me because at every level the Government are failing to mention those who do not live in normal households. For the moment, I propose this neat amendment to Clause 8 and thereby give the Government the opportunity of demonstrating that they mean what they say when they tell us that "every child matters". I was tempted to delete the words "as far as possible", but I resisted the temptation because, had I done so, there would be no chance whatever of the Government accepting my amendment. I hope that the Minister will accept it because it may save him considerable embarrassment next time the Committee on the Rights of the Child inspects this country's compliance with the convention. I cannot imagine that this failure will not be picked up and criticised by the committee on that occasion.
The noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, and I both want our amendments on the face of the Bill, so I hope that they will be accepted. However, if I should
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Baroness Afshar: My Lords, I support the amendment because it is surely not the intention of the Bill to make marginal children invisible. Of all the children who actually need help, the greatest numbers are asylum seekers and Gypsies, who have virtually no access to other resources. I assume that this is not the intention of the Bill. Therefore, it is important to make it clear in the Bill that those children are included and their well-being is at the centre of the Bill.
Lord Freud: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, made some important points when introducing his amendment and identified yet another serious flaw in these four targets. He is quite right to raise the possibility of many children much in need of support who will fall through the holes of this provision as currently drafted and who will go uncounted. Overlooking children who should certainly be included in an assessment of child poverty is a real danger of the Government's decision to legislate on such a complex issue in only 30 clauses. By defining the success or failure for future government around the four financial targets, the Bill unavoidably biases any UK strategy to the households covered by those targets. The noble Lord's amendments highlight that some children are almost impossible to catch in surveys and any assessment of their circumstances will be generalised and potentially misleading. Does that not cast doubt on the wisdom of measuring all success and failure against those four targets?
The Minister will no doubt point out, once more, that any measures taken under Clause 8 or Part 2 need not restrict themselves to the households covered by Clauses 1 to 6. But "need not" and "will not" are two very different matters. The Bill has been introduced as an influential Bill that will actively focus the Secretary of State's attentions towards child poverty. How can the Minister accept that and yet remain unconvinced that its provisions will not actively focus attention on the households that it specifically identifies?
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I support the drive behind these amendments, particularly what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said. I want to take this opportunity to hear from the Minister what has been done for Traveller children. The concern is that many of them are not receiving the education that they should receive. Their parents did not get an education either, so they are therefore unable to gain good remuneration in their employment. There is a generational problem of lack of access to education resulting in poverty.
This is an important issue that the Bill should certainly not miss. I look forward to the reassurances that I hope the Minister will offer, particularly on improving the access to education of Traveller children. I know the Government have taken some steps to improve it.
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2.15 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton): My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Morris and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for these amendments, which give us the opportunity to discuss an important area of the Bill. I am delighted that the noble Baroness is resisting temptation today. I am not sure that my noble friend would see this as an opportunity for the noble Lord, Lord Freud, to have another go at the targets and seek to undermine them, leading inexorably to his conclusion that he does not feel bound by any of them. However, we will see where that debate heads at the end of the Bill.
I say to my noble friend Lord Morris that it is not the case that there is a narrow definition of "households" for the purposes of the Bill. Something like 98 per cent of households are within the definitions in the surveys we are studying and cover the vast majority of children. Neither does that approach assume that all families are alike. The definition covers, for example, children on local authority Traveller sites, asylum seekers in families who have been placed in social housing and children in care with foster families, although clearly it does not cover all children.
Amendment 16 seeks to add a further regulating power to Clause 6 which would enable the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out the circumstances in which a child living in communal accommodation may be regarded as living in a qualifying household. While this is not quite its effect, it is clear that the purpose behind the amendment is to ensure that the survey used to measure progress against the child poverty targets in Clauses 2 to 5 covers as many children in communal accommodation as possible.
Let me make it clear that our goal is to eradicate poverty for all children and that the framework that the Bill establishes for achieving this goal, using national child poverty strategies and imposing duties on local government to tackle child poverty, applies to all children in the UK. To ensure accountability for and progress towards this goal, Clauses 2 to 5 define targets for a range of poverty indicators.
As I am sure noble Lords appreciate, these targets will be effective only if progress towards them is measurable. That is why they do not apply to children who are not covered by the surveys that we use to measure poverty. Targeting for these children would not be measurable and, therefore, would be an ineffective way to ensure that experiences of poverty are tackled. The Bill therefore sets out that targets apply only to children living in qualifying households. These will be defined in regulations in terms of the households covered by the surveys used to measure poverty.
When this amendment was debated in another place, there was considerable sympathy with what it was seeking to achieve. However, it was also recognised by Members on all sides of the other place that, for the reasons I have explained, it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to work out how poverty for these groups should be measured given that the targets in the Bill are based on household income data. Given
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The surveys which will be used to measure progress are the best instruments available for measuring the household income of children across the UK, but they do not cover children who reside in communal establishments. That definition is assumed to be equivalent to the communal establishments set out in the draft regulations which have been made available to noble Lords in the Peers' information pack.
There are a number of different circumstances under which a child may be living in a communal establishment-an issue touched upon by many noble Lords-and I shall try to address each of them in turn. For many children living in communal establishments, the concept of household income is simply inapplicable. There would be no way of allocating a household income for children living in residential care homes, young offender institutions, asylum centres and other similar communal settings, and so the concept of income poverty could not apply.
However, in many of these cases, statutory minimum standards apply to ensure reasonable standards of living. For example, in residential care homes, minimum requirements include healthy meals, clothes of an individual's choosing and sufficient financial resources to fund leisure activities and trips. For children living in households in communal establishments such as women's refuges, there are obvious ethical reasons why it is not appropriate for interviewers to enter the premises and ask individual families about their circumstances.
Households with children which reside in communal establishments such as bed-and-breakfast hotels are not covered by the surveys because the cost and difficulty of including such households in them is considered to be disproportionate to the additional information that would be gained. Even if such establishments were covered by the surveys, they comprise such a small proportion of the population that it is almost certain that the change would have no impact on the child poverty statistics used to measure progress against the target.
The number of such households continues to fall. The Government have set a national target to halve the number of households in temporary accommodation by 2010, as part of their aim to increase long-term housing supply and affordability. The number of such households with children has fallen from 5,240 in the first quarter of 2003 to 510 in the second quarter of 2009.
The Family Resources Survey is subject to comprehensive methodological reviews, which include assessment of the coverage of the survey and whether it can be improved. The Office for National Statistics is reviewing the feasibility of extending coverage of some surveys to include communal establishments such as bed-and-breakfast accommodation. If this is considered feasible and is adopted by the surveys used to measure poverty for the Bill, the Bill is designed so that the coverage of the targets can be amended to match the new coverage of the survey.
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Clause 6(4) requires the Secretary of State to ensure that the targets have as wide an application as is reasonably practicable. However, it is recognised in that provision that the targets can apply only to households which can be surveyed,
- "having regard to the statistical surveys that are being or can be reasonably expected to be undertaken".
If there is evidence that wider coverage has become practicable, the Secretary of State is required to ensure that the targets match this coverage.
I hope that my noble friend Lord Morris is assured that where children reside in communal establishments either it is not appropriate for them to be covered by the targets or continuing review processes are in place to ensure that if and when it becomes practicable for surveys to cover them it will be reflected in the Bill.
I also reassure my noble friend that the well-being of many of the children not covered by the targets is monitored or assured in other ways. For example, we monitor a range of outcome and well-being measures for looked-after children who live in accommodation not covered by the surveys; we have minimum statutory standards for looked-after children in residential care; and the Government have a target to reduce the number of households living in temporary accommodation, including bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
Amendment 16 would require the Secretary of State to ask for advice from the commission regarding appropriate levels of survey coverage before regulations are made defining qualifying households. Survey coverage is relevant to the regulations because qualifying households will be defined based on which households are covered by the surveys used to measure the child poverty targets. The role of the commission is to provide advice on the child poverty strategy and the child poverty targets. However, it is not appropriate for the commission to have a role in defining terms which appear in the Bill, which is what the amendment would involve. There is no guarantee that any member of the commission would be appropriately qualified to advise on the technical issue of what statistical surveys can reasonably be expected to be undertaken with regard to coverage of households.
Paragraph 1(4)(b) of Schedule 1 requires the Secretary of State to have regard to the desirability of securing that the commission has experience of child poverty research, but there is no requirement to ensure that the commission has in-depth knowledge of the coverage of the surveys which are used by government to measure it.
I assure noble Lords that there are already sufficient safeguards in place to ensure that the definition of "qualifying households" set out in regulations reflects the widest survey coverage that is reasonably practicable. First, the surveys which gather the statistics used to measure progress against the targets in the Bill must meet National Statistics quality standards. The coverage of these surveys is regularly reviewed, and wherever coverage can be improved without excessive cost or detriment to the survey, changes are made. Secondly, Clause 6(4) requires the Secretary of State to have regard to what statistical surveys can reasonably be expected to be undertaken. Finally, any regulations made under subsections (1)(a) and the proposed new
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I am grateful to the noble Baroness for tabling Amendment 26, since it provides another useful opportunity to explain to noble Lords the meaning of the duty in Clause 8(2)(b) and the reasons for its inclusion in the Bill. Clause 8(2)(b) states the second purpose of the child poverty strategy, which is to ensure, as far as possible, that children in the UK,
The noble Baroness referred to "as far as possible". That is included because it would be impossible to have, and legislate for, an absolute. I hope she would acknowledge that point. This complements the other requirement for the strategy, as stated in subsection (2)(a): to comply with the duty in Clause 1 to meet the targets by 2020.
The duty to tackle the experience of socio-economic disadvantage among children was included for two reasons. First, as noble Lords are aware, it is not possible to measure a small number of children, as we have just discussed. It is regrettable but unavoidable for reasons that have already been explained. However, we fully recognise that these children may be among the most vulnerable and that any strategy to tackle child poverty must address their needs. The duty in Clause 8(2)(b) therefore extends the application of the strategy to all children in the UK.
In its recent report on the Bill, the Joint Committee on Human Rights welcomed the inclusion of this duty. Page 20 of the report says that the committee,
"accept that this part of the Bill will benefit all children living in poverty and not just those who are caught by the targets".
To set out the Government's commitment to alleviate child poverty in legislation, it is necessary to set measurable targets and these can relate only to measurable children. Including a duty to prepare and publish a strategy in relation to all children demonstrates that the intention of the Bill is to address poverty experienced by all children, and not to discriminate against any groups. I hope noble Lords are reassured by that.
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