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Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I do not want to widen the issue too much and so I shall be extremely brief. On the question of measuring informal sources of income, or measuring sources of income at all, we have to take cognisance of the fact that the household is no longer a stable thing in today’s society—at least, some households are not very stable. I am not making a value judgment, but you can get a situation in which a mother lives with two, three or four children, all with different fathers, and the man who is living with her is not the father of any of them. Who is paying benefit and maintenance and who is paying rent? There are all sorts of issues in that area.