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Child Poverty Bill

Thank you. I will try to rattle through my remarks. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for his contribution. I accept his support and I agree that we have levers, such as a family formation of the right type. There are lots of things that the state can and should be encouraged to do. I make it absolutely clear to the Minister that the item on addiction has nothing to do with withholding funding from particular families. I made it clear at the beginning that it is no good having a system that just puts the money into the pocket of someone who is addicted and who will spend the money on their addiction. We must find a way, in those circumstances, of making sure that the money that we spend for the benefit of the children is indeed spent for the benefit of the children. That is a quite different proposition from the one that the Minister implied that I seek. I am glad that, since Grand Committee, the Minister seems to be a convert to the importance of a stable relationship between parents. He seems to have moved quite some way from what he said previously about correlations in this area. I accept that many of the things that I seek are in Clause 8. The amendment is important because it seeks to balance the purely financial targets in the Bill, which are the main driver, with the causes of poverty. That is why I seek to give many of those elements the same weight as the financial targets. I am sure that the debate on this will continue, albeit in another form.