Contribution
I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for the clarification at the end of her comments.
Amendment 163 has enabled us to have a very good debate about the importance of making progress on child poverty. I agree fully with the desire of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and my noble friend Lady Lister for ambition on reducing child poverty. The success of the last Labour Government in tackling child poverty is the legacy that we are aiming to build on in this one. We want to see an enduring reduction in child poverty over this Parliament as part of a long-term, 10-year strategy for lasting change. The child poverty strategy, which we will publish in the autumn, will set out the Government’s strong commitment to this and, importantly, how we plan to achieve this reduction. The strategy will tackle overall child poverty as well as going beyond that to focus on the children in the deepest poverty, lacking essentials and what is needed to give every child the best start in life.
I very strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bird, that this is a multifaceted problem. Several noble Lords have identified particular issues that are likely to benefit children. I agree that education, and particularly recognition of the need for education for disadvantaged children, which is also a key theme for this Government, is an important part of that, but there are in fact a complex and interrelated range of issues that lead to child poverty and that can help to alleviate it.
We have already started to take substantive action across major drivers of child poverty through the spending review 2025. This includes: an expansion of free school meals, which will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of the Parliament; establishing a long-term crisis and resilience fund, supported by £1 billion a year; investing in local family support services; and extending the £3 bus fare cap. We have also announced the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation and £13.2 billion across the Parliament for the warm homes plan.
Our commitments at the 2025 spending review come on top of the existing action we are taking, which includes expanding free breakfast clubs, as we talked about today; capping the number of branded school uniform items that children are expected to wear, which I think we will talk about on Monday; increasing the national minimum wage for those on the lowest incomes; and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a fair repayment rate on universal credit deductions. The Child Poverty Taskforce will continue to explore all available levers to drive forward short and long-term action across government to reduce child poverty. The strategy will look at levers across four key themes: increasing incomes, reducing essential costs, increasing financial resilience and better local support, especially in the early years. This will build on the reform plans under way across government and work under way in devolved Governments.
We agree that timely reporting is important in monitoring progress. The Government already have a statutory duty to publish poverty statistics annually. In addition, in the autumn we will set out the monitoring and evaluation arrangements we will put in place for our strategy for this year and future years, so that the progress we make is transparent for all. I very much take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, made about accountability, both to this House and more broadly, for making progress on the strategy, but our view is that statutory targets for child poverty would not in themselves drive reductions in poverty. They can be reversed, and have been in the past, so do not serve as an effective means of binding government to a specific course of action. As my noble friend referenced—although only to say that she did not agree with it—they also risk adversely narrowing the focus of effort to moving the children closest to the poverty line over it, rather than the direct and comprehensive approach that we will take to helping children in relative and deep poverty across the United Kingdom.
I cannot help but add that noble Lords have come up with all sorts of reasons as to why things might have changed in 2010, but my view is that the defining issue in whether children get out of poverty is not whether targets are set but the nature of the Government at the time. The last Labour Government saw reductions in child poverty; this Labour Government are committed to achieving that as well. I hope that provides assurance to noble Lords.