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Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, throughout the debates on the Bill it is clear that we are not all on the same page about when and how the Secretary of State should ultimately be held accountable for the success, or not, of his strategy. As far as I can see, the sole instance of genuine accountability falls in 2020 when the financial targets are met or not met; that is the only point at which the Secretary of State will have to explain why he was unable to lower child poverty levels to among the best in Europe. Our views on the inadequacy of those four targets are well known. The lack of accountability for the strategy, the inability of Parliament to suggest that more could be done via a different approach and the lack of any interim targets all reinforce my concerns. I am not entirely comfortable with the amendment’s new subsection (8), though. First, ““taking account of”” does not, in any piece of legislation that I have ever seen, necessarily result in the need for change. Secondly, as we have discussed at length, the success and failure of the strategy should not be seen solely through the prism of the four financial targets, and I would oppose any suggestion that it should be.