Contribution
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate’s inspiring maiden speech. He is a Bishop far from lost who has already found his feet, I would say. In the absence of my noble friend Lord West of Spithead, it would be remiss of me not to start by mentioning the right reverend Prelate’s affinity with the Navy. Portsmouth is also, as he said, marked by considerable area inequalities and poverty, to which he referred so movingly. They are very much on the Government’s agenda.
As his speech reflected, the right reverend Prelate brings to your Lordships’ House a passion for education, children and young people’s opportunities, the environment and tackling intergenerational unfairness: all issues that resonate so strongly with our work in this House. I look forward very much to his future contributions. They are, as he made clear, also important issues for the annual Budget, to which I now turn.
I, and I know others, shed tears of joy at the announcement that what was dubbed the “worst social policy ever” by an eminent social policy scholar is finally to be abolished. The end of the two-child limit means that not only will 450,000 fewer children be in poverty by the end of this Parliament, but the depth of poverty will be reduced for many. One mother responded:
“Finally, all my children will be seen as equals”.
To those who have reacted hysterically and in language that denigrates thousands of parents, calling it a “Budget for Benefits Street”, paid for by striving working people, I remind them that three-fifths of affected families have a parent in work, with an estimated 70% of the additional spending going to this group, and that raising children on an inadequate income is itself hard work.
I ask them, are they really happy to countenance hundreds of thousands of children suffering desperate poverty, testified to by charities and academic research, because of an ideological belief that punishes children? Are they oblivious to the costs of this poverty, not just to children whose childhoods and futures are blighted, but to the wider society and economy? Are they aware of the depth of public concern about child poverty? Polling by Public First found that this concern meant that, when provided with information about the cost-effectiveness of abolishing the limit in reducing child poverty, support for doing so soared.
Those who conjure up an image of social security claimants enjoying some kind of bonanza conveniently ignore the £50 billion a year estimated to have been chopped off the social security budget as a result of Tory cuts, freezes and restrictions. The real problem today is not the mythical so-called ballooning welfare budget but a social security system that fails to provide genuine security for both those in and out of work. One consequence has been growing reliance on food banks especially among families with children. As the Trussell Trust stated, in welcoming the Budget:
“A future without hunger will only be possible by building a social security system that works for everyone”.
Investment in social security is top of the agenda for many who have given evidence to the Child Poverty Taskforce. I hope very much that it will respond positively in the child poverty strategy. In particular, the impact of the Budget announcement on the depth of child poverty will be dampened if the benefit cap continues. An estimated one in 12 children escaping the frying pan of the two-child limit will be no better off, because they will be caught in the fire of the cap.
Together with the damaging freezing of the local housing allowance, the cap is contributing to homelessness and has a disproportionate effect on domestic abuse survivors and their children. Action on both would therefore contribute not just to the child poverty strategy but the homelessness and violence against women strategies. But, if the cap is to be retained, could my noble friend the Minister at the very least pass on to the DWP the message that its level needs to be uprated annually in line with universal credit, to prevent more and more children being caught in it? As it is, there has been only one increase since 2016 when it was cut.
Abolition of the two-child limit is, as we have heard, the single most cost-effective lever to reduce child poverty. But no one pretends it can do the job on its own—hence the importance of the forthcoming child poverty strategy. UNICEF recently warned:
“Poverty poisons childhood—and our collective future”.
This Budget will draw some of that poison from our society, to the benefit of children and us all.