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Child Poverty Bill

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Freud, that this country should be aiming at the well-being of every child. We want every child to be healthy and happy and to fulfil his or her potential in life. However, the noble Lord has too much ambition for the Bill. Child welfare is achieved by a raft of different strategies to address different aspects of their well-being, and it is very complex. The Bill has ambitious, but fairly narrow, targets. Our job in this Committee and, later, on the Floor of the House, is to make the Bill, within its objectives, as good as we can. What the noble Lord suggests is a distraction. I do not disagree with it in principle. As an only just ex-trustee of UNICEF, I am very concerned, despite all the criticism of the report to which the noble Lord referred, that the UK found itself at the bottom of that list. I am sure we would all like to see our children right at the top. We need to look at this Bill and what it is trying to achieve as just one of many strategies. We might well cite the importance of getting rid of the violence in our society, which affects so many of our children, their behaviour, stress and their brain development—all things that I have spoken about many times in the House. We might well look at children’s education and other aspects, some of which can be achieved by improving their income, but not all. In this Committee, we must focus on the meat of the Bill.