---

Child Poverty Bill

I thank the Minister for giving me the opportunity to respond on the point about today’s Financial Times story. I start by emphasising the importance that the Conservative Party places on child poverty and sorting it out. I was going to use the word "eradicate", but I realise that we will probably have a lot of debate about what that means, so I have used "sorting it out" instead. There is a difference between the Government and my party in this area. We are concerned that the efforts that we put into child poverty are directed at getting to the sources and causes of poverty, not to the measurement of it and to financial manipulation. In some amendments that we have tabled and will debate, we are trying to shift the emphasis of the Bill from targets that are essentially financial measures to some of the causes. I will not go into detail now, because we will spend a lot of time discussing this later, but that is the difference.