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Child Poverty Bill

That is a fair question and it would need to be considered. We do not want to price people—particularly single parents who are inflexible in what they can do in the workplace because of their family commitments—out of accessing the marketplace. It is not a battle between those who do not care and those who care and want a higher minimum wage. It is a really tough judgment call to get the right thing for the country as a whole and for the poorest in particular. That is an argument that I would be happy to engage in with the hon. Gentleman. I do not have any firm views on it, and his expertise might easily eclipse mine. We talked about social cohesion and, as hon. Members have mentioned, households in chaos. We have to deal with that. What do we do when we take measures? I fear that this Bill could end up enabling transfers of money to households, rewarding and reinforcing chaotic lifestyles. The Minister has had nothing to say about that. In fact, one of the Ministers who is on the Front Bench—the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman)—said in Committee, extraordinarily:""The Government are not wholly convinced that family breakdown is a cause of poverty"." She actually said that. If she wants to intervene, I would be happy to allow her to retract that today. She said:""The Government are not wholly convinced that family breakdown is a cause of poverty; on the contrary, we tend to hold the view that poverty is a cause of family breakdown."––[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2009; c. 15, Q44.]" Of course poverty is a cause of family breakdown. Of course the tensions and pressures of poverty might exacerbate tensions in a family. However, to suggest that family breakdown does not push people into poverty is entirely to misunderstand what happens to families. The fact that we have a Minister on the Front Bench with such a perverse and peculiar view undermines my confidence that the Government know what they are doing.