Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)

My Lords, I very much welcome the gracious Speech’s emphasis on economic security, which is of particular importance to people on low incomes, and its reference to the Government’s belief that no child should be held back due to poverty. The child poverty strategy, including the abolition of the unethical two-child limit, represents an important platform on which the Government can now build. If economic security is our guiding principle, it must also be the aim of future social security reform. The legacy of the previous Government continues to be a social security system that does not live up to its promise of providing security through social means, and the new conventional wisdom that spending on working age benefits is out of control is simply not true. As Trussell warns, our social security system should provide a firmer footing so people can thrive, and progress on reducing food bank need can be sustained. The promise of economic security and the chance for “every child … to succeed to the best of his or her ability” has implications for Home Office policy on asylum and migration, some of which will be included in the immigration and asylum Bill. Yet the Home Affairs Committee report on the earned settlement changes, echoing the concerns of civil society groups about the impact on poverty, warns that: “The Government will need to understand and mitigate any increase in child poverty”. Can my noble friend the Minister tell us whether the Government accept this and, if yes, how they propose to act on it? The asylum changes also spell potentially worsening poverty or even destitution. It seems that “every child” does not include migrant children, despite the child poverty strategy’s commitment to “ensuring that vulnerable migrant children receive the support that they require, regardless of their immigration status”. The extension of the qualifying periods for settlement will massively increase insecurity for both refugees and migrants and their children, with damaging implications for their mental health and the Government’s aim of better integration. Worrying too is the inclusion in the Bill of a new, supposedly independent appeals body, rejected by the Law Society as an abrupt and potentially “harmful change” when the priority should be improving the quality of initial decision-making. Can my noble friend say whether the Government will be publishing the results of the recent, somewhat rushed, call for evidence? Finally, on a brighter note, I look forward to us receiving the Representation of the People Bill and, in particular, its extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds, the success of which will very much depend on the strengthening of citizenship education, as noted by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and as I am sure the much missed late noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, would have argued. I hope, too, that we might consider following the example of Wales and Scotland by extending the franchise to foreign residents, as some argued for at the Commons Second Reading and as supported by the Prime Minister in the past. There was also strong support at Second Reading for the establishment of a national commission for electoral reform. Since then, the local elections have underlined just how far the old first past the post system is out of sync with multi-party politics. To quote Martin Wolf in the FT, “the great danger is … tyranny of the minority, in which a small plurality secures overwhelming power. First-past-the-post has become suicidal. The time to reform the old system is now”.