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Child Poverty Bill

I remain completely baffled. What seems to be going on is that part of the time the noble Lord seems to accept that there is a difference between targets—which are about income and are tight, precise, quantifiable, measurable and, we hope, deliverable—and strategies, which deal with the much broader issues of the child’s well-being, which we all want to see ensured. This goes back to a much earlier debate when the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and I said that we can all add to the list. The noble Lord cannot turn strategies into targets and then think you are actually doing something useful. All you can probably do is say that the number of teenage pregnancies has gone down, or the amount of addiction has gone down, or the incidence of mental ill health has gone down. The noble Lord seems to spend his time moving between the vocabulary of targets and the vocabulary of strategies and trying to turn strategies, which are much more holistic—that is why they are treated separately under the scrutiny of the commission—into targets. You cannot quantify, measure or deliver strategies in the way he wishes. That is why they are not targets.