---

Child Poverty Bill

I shall try to answer that. The duty in the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act was different. In that Act, the duty was to publish a strategy to ensure that, as far as reasonably practicable, persons do not live in fuel poverty. Here, the duties to meet the targets are absolute. The accountability framework established by the Bill will ensure that government are regularly held to account on progress towards the 2020 target. The provisions have been included to drive action to tackle child poverty in a sustainable way and to avoid any situation where it is necessary to pump in billions of pounds in financial transfers in 2018 and 2019. I think that the thrust of my noble friend’s point was that if we were facing economic calamity—I guess the proposition is that we have a Conservative Government at that time—and incomes fell, the relative duties required to be met would fall as well. My understanding is that there was a different duty in the warm homes and energy Act. Therefore, the read-across in the way that the noble Lord suggested is not established by case law.