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Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to this amendment, which requires that in preparing the UK strategy, the Secretary of State must consider the impact that any measure taken will have on "other groups" in poverty. It is assumed that by "other groups", the amendment is intended to cover groups such as childless households and pensioners. It cannot be the remit of the child poverty strategy itself to consider the impact of any proposed measures on other groups that may be living in poverty. However, the Secretary of State will not be able to take policy and spending decisions on measures to prevent and tackle child poverty in isolation. Such decisions will be taken in the round and through prioritisation at key fiscal events, including the Pre-Budget and Budget Reports and departmental spending reviews. In addition, Clause 15 requires the likely impact of any measure on the economy and fiscal circumstances, and the likely impact of implementing any proposed measure on taxation, public spending and public borrowing, to be taken into account by the Secretary of State when preparing a UK strategy and by the commission when considering any advice to be given to the Secretary of State or the devolved Administrations. The effect would be to require the commission and UK, Scottish and Northern Ireland Ministers to have regard to budgetary constraints and value for money in developing and advising on strategies. This will necessarily need to balance the impact of any measures on other policy areas and priority groups. I hope that the noble Lord is reassured by this. This is the Child Poverty Bill and is about helping children out of poverty. As to distortions, I think he was almost referring to distortions within child poverty groups. Under this Bill, we have to meet all the targets, as the noble Lord is aware. If the issue is whether there will be distortion of those groups in aggregate with other groups in society, the way to settle that is through the normal budgetary discussions on the PBR and at the Budget where the implications of resources are properly analysed and debated.