My Lords, for me, this is probably one of the most important debates that I could ever be involved in, and I am glad we have managed to get time for it. This is largely because, in my opinion, poverty is the background to everything, from racism all the way through to inequality. Our prisons are full of people who never got a fair crack of the whip at birth—and I am one of them. I come from a London Irish racist, small-minded and self-harming working class in Notting Hill; I have spoken about that on many occasions.
Growing up in poverty, with self-harming, drink, violence, wife-beating and all that, what I found so interesting was that I never met an adult in that world that I came into. All I met was self-defeat and people who were harmed by poverty so abjectly that, in some ways, they could never translate themselves into being fully human. They could never savour the advantages, as I later did when I became a posh boy because every time I got arrested, I learned things in the prison system—so, by the time I was 18, I was the posh guy that noble Lords see before them. Those people never went to the National Gallery. They never knew the difference between the trecento, the quattrocento and the cinquecento—neither do some people here. The point is that they were never allowed to be fully human.
We have to embrace that. When we embrace it, we have to realise that if we seriously want to do something about it, we need to look at the way we handle poverty in government, in local authorities, in charitable work, in our thinking and in how we respond to the needs of others. The traditional way of responding to the needs of others is to feel sorry for them—to pity them, to feel guilty and that what you really need to do is give the poor more. I came into the House of Lords and was immediately overrun by people wanting me to participate in some projects that were about giving the poor more. I said, “I’m sorry. I’m here to dismantle poverty and turn the tap off. I’m not here to deal with the everyday crisis of poverty, because I have to stand above it”. Somebody has to stand above it and try to bring all the efforts together so that poverty does not continue.
Giving the poor more has been going on for thousands of years. You can go back to the Greek philosophers: people established their humanity by giving the poor more. Every religion always wants to give the poor more. When I worked in America, I was astonished at the amount of schoolchildren I knew or met who would put food into a charity dumpster so that they could give the poor more. I did not see people make much effort to say, “Hang on—what are we doing here? Are we decreasing poverty or are we responding only to the everydayness—the precious thing?”.
I am an emergencist. I started the Big Issue 32 years ago to respond to the crisis of poverty, because I was appalled at the way that people saw homeless people on the streets of London, and then on the streets of cities throughout the UK, Europe, Asia, North America and South America, so I got involved then in giving the poor more. After 10 years of that, I was interviewed by the Times, which said, “Johnny Bird, what have you been doing for the last 10 years? You’ve been doing this, but what are you going to do for the next 10 or 20 years?” I said, “Well, for the last 10 years, I’ve been mending broken clocks. For the next 10 or 20 years, I’m going to try and prevent the clocks breaking”.
My Lords, follow that! I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for the opportunity not just to debate this important issue but also to say thank you to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham for his tireless championing of the interests of children in poverty and also refugees and asylum seekers. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with him, and he will be sorely missed.
I shall focus my remarks mainly on child poverty and the need for a cross-government child poverty strategy, not least because children are disproportionately at risk of poverty. As the Association of Directors of Children’s Services reminded us this week:
“Sadly, children’s needs, their rights and outcomes have not been prioritised in recent years”.
No doubt the Minister will trot out the usual cherry-picked statistics on so-called absolute poverty, despite the promise of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, when leader of the Conservative Party, that the party
“recognises, will measure and will act on relative poverty”.
I shall spare noble Lords the trading of statistics, but we cannot ignore the growing evidence of the intensification of poverty, serious hardship and indeed, as documented by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, destitution.
Last month, the Prime Minister in a radio interview said that he was sad to hear of families in poverty who reportedly were having to water down baby formula, and that he was committed to sitting down with those involved, if he were written to. Well, he would have to sit down with an awful lot of people, if he were to meet all those who are unable to afford life’s basics today. What is needed is systemic change, not individual sympathy—and that brings me to today’s Motion.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on securing this debate, although I do not necessarily agree with all his views. I also take this opportunity to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham—Bishop Paul, as we know him—for his significant contributions to the work of this House, particularly in the area of children. I also add how much we look forward to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford’s maiden speech in this debate.
Poverty, whether relative or absolute, is difficult to understand fully unless it has been personally experienced. It means, among other things: never going to the movies; shopping only for the cheapest basics; no holidays; not being able to afford a warm winter coat or new shoes; no birthday parties for children as they cannot afford to take a present; not being able to afford bus fares; living in constant fear of the fridge breaking down; and, at the poorest end, hunger, cold and periods of destitution for those households. The consequences of such deprivation are, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, deep and long lasting for children, who continue throughout their lives to underperform in all development measures. Poverty affects life chances from day one.
This is a bleak picture, yet official statistics reveal that 11 million people in the UK—17%—are relatively poor and a shocking 13% live in absolute poverty. This, as we have heard, is the worst level in Europe. It is unacceptable, but is likely to get worse as the cost of living crisis continues. As of July 2023, 6.1 million people were claiming universal credit. Additional support includes energy discounts, extra pension payments and free prescriptions. It is not as if the Government are unaware or unwilling to acknowledge widespread poverty or to act to limit it. To my mind, the somewhat courageous levelling-up programme, with its four admirable missions, is one example—but it is not working. Poverty rates have not changed significantly since 2010-11.
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for his timely debate and his relentless and indefatigable championing of this issue. I declare my interests, most particularly as president of the British Chambers of Commerce and chancellor of the Open University.
I will make three brief points. The first is about business and its role in helping with this issue. I have been travelling around the country as president of the British Chambers of Commerce. I am not going to share my travel diary, but I have most recently been in Preston, Coventry, Doncaster, Poole and Glasgow, and, with the British Chambers of Commerce, I have launched bits of work that look at how we can rejuvenate our economy over the next decade—a kind of playbook for whatever shade of Government we find ourselves with later in the year. The most recent work we did was about the future of the local economy, and I will emphasise how important it feels to make sure that we do not only join up policy across central government but that we link that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned, with local government and its fundamental role in helping drive local economies that we know are so essential in providing high-quality work and fuelling the economy to enable any of the choices that we are talking about in this debate.
When the British Chambers has been doing this work, we have been trying to reinforce three key planks: we need high-quality local leadership around these issues to make sure that local economies and communities have got the best possible talent around them; we need better collaboration with business at a local level to ensure that we have got, not just the acceptable jobs or jobs that are paying, but jobs that provide the quality that my noble friend Lady D’Souza was talking about; and we need to make sure that we have enough devolution and power locally to enable these communities to build resilience.
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for securing this debate on an issue of such importance and for the way that he introduced it. Also, because I have spoken on this issue repeatedly throughout my past 10 years as a Member of this House, it thus seems a fitting debate for my valedictory speech. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for speaking straight after me. We have worked together on poverty in the north-east. I also look forward to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford’s maiden speech.
During my maiden speech, I spoke of the high levels of poverty in my region of the north-east. Sadly, poverty, particularly child poverty, remains as significant an issue today as it was 10 years ago. Only last week, the North East Child Poverty Commission released its blueprint for tackling child poverty, featuring the latest poverty stats from 2021 to 2022, along with those recorded in 2014-15—the very year I entered this House. They reveal that, in 2021-22, there were around 134,000 children living in poverty in the North East Mayoral Combined Authority—an increase of over 7% since 2014-15.
But poverty is not just about numbers. Behind each statistic are the lives of children and the impact on them is all-encompassing. Poverty means going without the basic essentials. It means not being able to concentrate in school due to an empty stomach and not getting adequate nutrition; a packet of apples costs five times the amount of a packet of biscuits. Poverty means missed opportunities. It denies the chance to develop new skills through extra-curricular activities. Poverty means growing up too soon. It means dealing with stresses and anxieties with which no child should ever be burdened. It impacts the present and its effects last a lifetime.
More fundamentally, I care about poverty because God cares about it. God is:
My Lords, it is a great pleasure and privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate, who is leaving not only this House but his job as Bishop of Durham. I value both aspects of his ministry. Today, he has again shown that he does not shy away from speaking truth to power. That is one of the things we really value him for. His work in the north-east has been tireless, tackling all of us on what we are doing about the most vulnerable, particularly children, and his work in the House on the impact of legislation has been outstanding.
The right reverend Prelate has referred to the two-child rule in universal credit. His work, attention to detail and recognition from his ministry of the challenges for families, and his determination not to let go of issues simply because they are not the issue of the day, have been a real lesson to all of us. The role of Bishops in this House is never one that lacks controversy, but he has conducted himself in an important way throughout, drawing from his faith and from his pastoral activity the lessons that we need to listen to and learn from—as he has demonstrated this morning.
I also have particular reasons to be grateful for his pastoral work. He of course lives in the traditional seat of the Bishop of Durham, Bishop Auckland. When his schedule allows, he worships at the Anglican-Methodist Church in Bishop Auckland, on Woodhouse Close Estate. He and his wife have been very active there; of course, there are members of my family who have been active in that almost since it began. The support of Bishop Paul and his wife for my sister-in-law and her family during my brother’s illness, and subsequent death last year, will never be forgotten by us. We all wish you, Bishop Paul—I am not supposed to use that language in here, but I am going to today—the very best in your retirement. You should know that you go having served this House well, but also the people of Durham and the most vulnerable in our society. Thank you.
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of Barnardo’s. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for bringing this important subject before the House and pay tribute to him for all he has done to bring hope to those in our society who most need it. With the Big Issue, he has shown and continues to show what can be done through charity and philanthropy to turn lives around. Indeed, there is such an important role in our country for charity, philanthropy, volunteerism and what the Foreign Secretary once dubbed the “big society”.
Important and cherished as that is, it does not take away the responsibility of government to address poverty directly, to ensure that government policy minimises unnecessary hardships and to look out for those who are unable to look after themselves. Child poverty is an entrenched problem in the UK, with more than one in four children living in poverty. Barnardo’s recently looked at one aspect of child poverty—bed poverty—and found that there are over 680,000 families in the UK with children who have had to share a bed because their family cannot afford another one. Crisis requests to local authorities for help with children’s beds and bedding have more than quadrupled in the last four years. What more does it take to shake us into realising that we must align and strengthen efforts to tackle poverty?
Let us be clear: when we talk about child poverty, we are talking about family poverty. Families, often with both parents working hard and doing all they can, are unable to provide adequately for their children. The red flag that Barnardo’s has raised is the imminent ending of the household support fund. That fund, provided by central government and renewed from year to year, is administered by local authorities. It has been a lifeline to those facing hardship, providing practical help and access to essentials.
Some 62% of funding for local welfare currently comes from the household support fund; yet, as matters stand, it will come to an end in only 39 days—at the end of March—at a time when the pressures on households who find themselves in poverty are greater, not less. Earlier this month, Barnardo’s and 120 other organisations warned the Chancellor of the devastating consequences for families if the fund is not extended beyond March. More broadly, local crisis support is a vital part of our social security system, providing timely support to those facing acute hardship.
My Lords, I begin by recording my grateful thanks for the welcome and encouragement I have received since my introduction to your Lordships’ House. I am especially grateful for the forbearance of the staff as they have helped me navigate the labyrinthine corridors of this place, and to my colleagues for their patience in introducing me to the various procedures and protocols that govern our business.
I became the Bishop of Hereford in early 2020, just before the start of the first lockdown. The diocese of Hereford celebrates the 1,350th anniversary of its foundation in 2026—we are a diocese that predates the foundation of England. Indeed, the earliest timbers in the episcopal residence were acorns in the year 910. I have both worthy and ignoble predecessors in this role. I have already done better than four of them, who never actually came to the diocese at all. I hope not to emulate one of my Saxon predecessors, who, angered by the burning of the cathedral by the Welsh in 1055, took up arms with some of the canons and died in battle as a result. I also hope to avoid the fate of the cousin of the bishop who was murdered in the garden in 1256 on the coat-tails of his cousin’s unpopularity.
Hereford is the smallest and most rural diocese in England. We comprise the counties of Herefordshire and the southern half of Shropshire, one parish in Worcestershire and 14 in Wales. Sustaining a diocesan infrastructure with such a small base presents its challenges. For every 800 people who live here, we have one church building, and three-quarters of them are grade 1 listed.
I am grateful to be the Bishop of Hereford, not least because of my agricultural interests. My first degree was in agriculture and forest sciences, followed by a master’s in soil and water engineering. Prior to ordination, I spent a number of happy years as an agronomist, advising farming clients in the south of England. I also married into a farming family, so the success of the agricultural sector and the health of the rural economy is a particular interest. I am probably the only Bishop on this Bench who can tell you both how to grow an excellent wheat crop and how to build a ventilated improved pit latrine.
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I created a methodology which I called PECC: prevention, emergency, coping and cure. What it threw up to me was that, in the intervention of state Governments and charities—and personal intervention from the public—80% of all the poverty money was spent on emergency and coping, with very little spent on prevention and cure. Each Government who came through—at the age of 78, I have been through many—always said that they put the fight to defeat poverty right at the top. Yet not one of them stopped and asked, “How do we reconfigure our governance? How do we reconfigure what we’re doing so that we can do a better job and turn the tap off, rather than using a tablespoon to take the water out of the bath?”. Everybody is at it, as was I for the first 10 years of my life as the Big Issue proprietor.
When I came into the House of Lords, I said that I came here to dismantle poverty. To do that is incredibly difficult when every government department that has anything to do with social justice or social opportunity always has a number of initiatives. Whenever a Government say to me that they have an initiative, I think “It’s a cover-up”—I am not speaking against the current Government, because I have been dealing with this for 30 years—because they do a little initiative, learn something from it and then put it aside. In fact, someone should do a history of government initiatives because it would find that they have tried every damn thing. The latest one is levelling up. I do not know why they do not call it “Get rid of poverty” or something like that.
I came in, I am sorry to say, to revolutionise the House of Lords and the Government, but not to pull them apart and get upset about who is here or there. I came in to concentrate on how to get the convergence of efforts so that when we use “emergency” we do so efficiently and deeply, and bring about changes. There are people in this House and the other place who have done enormously rich and deep things for people in need. But how do you take that as part of a social apparatus and put prevention in front of it? How do you put cure at the end of it?
Forty per cent of all money spent by His Majesty’s Government is spent on poverty. I am sorry—I repeat these things often, and people say to me, “You told us that the last time”, but I am going to tell you it the next time as well. Forty per cent of the money spent by government is spent on poverty—yet, if you look at the intervention of this Government, the last Government and presumably the next Government, there will be a bit here, a bit there, and a bit here and a bit there. There is no convergence; there is no joining together the strengths that we need to defeat poverty. According to the BMA, 50% of the people who present themselves with cardiac arrests are people suffering from food poverty. The emergency work that we need to do is to respond to the emergency and, at the same time, make sure that we are not increasing it by allowing people to slip into poverty.
I have a Bill going through the House that will go nowhere—absolutely nowhere. No one is interested in it. Whenever I talk to a politician of whatever party, or to the aspirant ones who stop me in Portcullis House and talk to me kindly about what they are going to do when they get in office—I presume it was not your lot, because you are already there—they say that they are going to do all sorts of wonderful things about poverty. But if they use the same mechanisms and devices that are being used at the moment, they will not be going anywhere.
Before Tony Blair came in, I remember having discussions with him, and I thought he was one of the most impressive personal managers that I had ever met. He made me feel really important, and he told me all the wonderful things he was going to do. I am not slagging him off—this is not a party-political thing. He was going to do big things about getting rid of homelessness. What he did was to open the gates of the Treasury to lots of homeless organisations, which went from this size to that size. People built lots more temporary accommodation—hostels and all sorts of things like that—and they thought it was a wonderful thing. But, unfortunately, it was still about “them” and “us”, meaning “us” who run the system and “them” who receive our beneficence. That is one of the major problems that we need to deal with.
My Bill calls for the creation of a ministry for poverty prevention. Why does it do that? It does so because, if poverty eats into the aspirations and ambitions of virtually every government department, how can the NHS really deliver, and how can schools really deliver, when about 30% of their budget is spent on dealing with the problems of poverty that are vectored into the classroom? What can the Ministry of Justice do, other than tread water and make sure that somebody does not escape, kill themselves or kill a guard? Why do we create these ministries and then deprive them of the opportunity of supplying change, justice and social justice, because poverty eats away at and destroys their work?
In my opinion, we need a Ministry of Justice prevention. I have spoken to lots of people, and they say, “Well, we could all do with a ministry—you could have a ministry for everything”. But the thing about poverty is that it gets into our pores and, in my opinion, it makes us lost and, to some extent, dishonest. We think that, if we can just give a handout to someone, we have changed things and done our bit. Thank you very much—God bless you all.
In 2010, the political parties came together to support the introduction of the Child Poverty Act, which required central, devolved and local government to produce child poverty strategies, building on the progress made on reducing child poverty over much of the previous decade. Despite that all-party support, the Act was watered down and then effectively abolished in 2016—though, thanks to the stalwart work of the right reverend Prelate, the duty to continue the measurement and publication of key poverty indicators was retained. But the upshot was that, as the Social Mobility Commission pointed out in 2021, England is now
“the only nation in the UK without a strategy to address child poverty”.
When challenged on the lack of a child poverty strategy, Ministers tend to recite a litany of various inadequate measures, but a list of measures does not constitute a strategy, with clear targets and reporting requirements. In contrast, my party has committed itself in its final National Policy Forum document, agreed by conference, to
“a bold and ambitious strategy to tackle child poverty”,
which will be cross-government and place a
“responsibility of all government departments to tackle the fundamental drivers of poverty”.
I just hope that this commitment will be set out clearly in our manifesto.
Decisions made by almost every government department have implications for children and others in poverty. For example, the Department for Education cannot ignore the impact of poverty, whether it be childcare policies, the costs of education, including school meals, the need to poverty-proof schools and, most fundamentally, the impact of poverty on the ability to learn, and its role in continued inequality of educational opportunities and outcomes.
Home Office rules have a direct impact on poverty among refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, and this is the subject of a current joint inquiry by the APPGs on Migration and on Poverty, which I co-chair. Fuel poverty is the responsibility of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero; the transition to net zero has to take account of the needs of those living in poverty as, otherwise, new research suggests that they could face what the authors call “transition poverty”.
Before I turn to the Minister’s own area of responsibility, I ask him what cross-government machinery exists to consider the impact of policies on poverty. What discussions does he have with colleagues in other departments to encourage them to think about the poverty implications of their work? The DWP’s work of course remains central to any poverty reduction strategy. At present, it seems as if its anti-poverty policy begins and ends with getting more people into paid work, regardless of the quality of the jobs on offer. I do not dispute that paid work is important and reduces the risk of poverty, but it is no panacea—witness the fact that the majority of children in poverty have at least one parent in work. Indeed, according to Action for Children, around 300,000 families with children are in poverty despite each parent being in full-time work. Much more needs to be done to break down the barriers faced, in particular by those with caring responsibilities.
Punitive sanctions have been shown to be counterproductive, pushing people into low-quality and insecure work, according to the Work Foundation and others. The evidence suggests that those struggling to get by on inadequate benefits do not make effective jobseekers, as poverty reduces psychological bandwidth and job-seeking itself can cost money.
I will say more about the inadequacy of the social security benefits that we expect our fellow citizens to survive on in next week’s uprating debate, but I make just two points now. First, in a briefing paper for the Financial Fairness Trust, my former colleague Professor Donald Hirsch concludes:
“The level of working age benefits in the UK today is denying claimants access to the most fundamental material resources needed to function day to day and have healthy lives”.
Secondly, a report from CPAG, of which I am honorary president, argues that the first step in tackling child poverty has to be the abolition of policies that are increasing it. This includes scrapping the benefit cap and the two-child limit—here, again, I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate’s indefatigable opposition to the latter; I suspect that the Minister might breathe a sigh of relief not to hear more from him about its iniquities. Underlying both points are the series of cuts made to social security since 2010. Given that many of those affected were already in poverty, we may have seen the impact less in the numbers in poverty and more in its growing depth.
A cross-government strategy must also include local government. Key here is the future of the household support fund. In his Answer to my recent Oral Question, the Minister referred to councils’ continued ability
“to use funding … to provide local welfare assistance”,—[Official Report, 30/1/24; col. 1106.]
which replaced the national Social Fund. But when I followed up with a Written Question about how many English local authorities do not run such a scheme, he responded that the Government do not have “robust data”. Why do they not? According to End Furniture Poverty, 37 authorities have closed their scheme, which means that if the household support fund is abolished as feared, there will be nothing other than charity for people in need to turn to. To their credit, a number of local authorities have developed anti-poverty strategies despite their financial pressures, but it is clear from research by Greater Manchester Poverty Action that they are hampered by the absence of a UK government strategy and by national policies that have compounded poverty.
As made clear so graphically by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, policy-making must aim to prevent poverty rather than simply reduce it after the event. I see that as one of the principles that should inform any anti-poverty strategy. Other principles include: the need to provide genuine financial security; attention to diversity, including the particular needs of racialised minorities, disabled people and women; recognition that poverty is experienced not just as a disadvantaged and insecure economic condition but as a corrosive and shameful social relation, which means that policies and their application must be dignity-promoting rather than, as is too often the case, shame-inducing; and, related to this, the involvement of people with experience of poverty, including children, in the development of anti-poverty policies—here we can learn from Scotland.
There is growing recognition of the value of the expertise of experience thanks to projects such as Changing Realities. Its recent briefing began and ended by quoting Erik, a single disabled parent. He argues:
“It is NOW that changes must be made in order for a fairer society where we can all have a reasonable standard of living, bring up our families to have the best possible start in life that is achievable”,
but, he says:
“I am starting to lose hope that anything will change for low-income families”.
Whatever Benches we sit on, we have a duty to offer people like Erik some cause for hope. He is right that change must happen now. Indeed, as public attitudes towards action against poverty appear to have softened in recent years, what better time to offer a vision of a good society in which a cross-government anti-poverty strategy has to play a central part?
Much is known about the causes of absolute poverty; indeed, a great deal is now known about how best to alleviate it. The following factors, for example, increase vulnerability: the two-child limit on income-related benefit, the cap on benefits, debt reductions from benefits and the five-week wait for the first payment. If you have no money and have exhausted all family and other networks for temporary financial help, five weeks is a very long time both for adults and, most especially, for young children. Overall, basic benefit rates are simply inadequate to temper the effects of the current recession.
Large numbers of households continue to fall into the gaps—gaps created in part by the plurality of government departments mandated to carry out anti-poverty programmes. Today, according to my count, there are at least eight different government departments with a particular responsibility to administer benefit programmes, from child tax credit to income support. Experience suggests that these departments too often fail to communicate and co-ordinate programmes. Most important of all is the failure to design and adhere to a comprehensive child poverty strategy that should run through all social welfare thinking and planning.
Such a programme would build on a basic acceptance that more money is necessary to underpin child benefit and make it universal, to raise the minimum wage, expand free school meals and support quality childcare costs. The key elements of a universal strategy across a broad range of policy areas, with key targets, timelines and regular reporting, need clear leadership and infrastructure. It is also essential that affected families, including children, are involved in policy development in this area and to make it as central to planning as climate change is, or is about to become.
In an average class of 30 children, nine will be living in poverty. It is a political choice whether we can, in all conscience, continue to live with this statistic.
There are examples, and I can think of many British Chambers members that are doing interesting projects to help from different angles to build that local resilience, which will help local poverty and local issues. In Old Trafford, Trafford Council is working with a company called Bruntwood; they are doing a huge redevelopment of 24,000 square feet in the area that is generating green pathways, new transport links and big infrastructure investment. But it has taken a lot of work to get to that point with that triumvirate of different groups working together and I believe deeply that we will not help with working on the prevent part of the PECC framework created by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, if we do not think about how to drive that business-led change at a local level and open up collaboration.
As I said, there are examples. There is the one in Trafford and, last week, Aviva launched a project with the British Chambers that looks at local planners, to help build high-quality jobs at a very specific level; we are really trying to find diverse people to train and become local planners. These will be high-quality jobs offered in communities that did not have those opportunities before; just 100 jobs to start with, but we hope to build and scale that over time. So the first point is that it is really important to emphasise that local co-ordination; as if the challenge of central government was not big enough, we must not forget local council integration as well.
The second point—and this is where I fear I will become a bit like the noble Lord, Lord Bird—is around digitisation. I have stood here many times and sometimes I feel like I am talking into a void. It is unacceptable that we think that 95% connectivity in this country is okay: it is not. We will never be able to connect communities that are completely outside the normal ways that we operate if we do not have the infrastructure, skills and digital ability to connect them. It is not just a question of alleviating poverty: it is a question of social justice.
Last week, I talked in a debate with the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and her Communications and Digital Committee, on a very good report about digital exclusion, but I fear the Minister’s responses did not please many on the committee and they certainly did not please me either, unfortunately. I ask with respect how the Government are thinking about the connections between digital disconnection and exclusion, because we know that of the 2.5 million people who do not use the internet, at least 60% to 70% of them fall into the lowest socioeconomic groups. We also know that you are unable to look for work if you are not looking online; 90% of jobs are advertised only online, so you are caught in a horrible nexus. Digitisation is such an important plank of how we will address the P part of the PECC from the noble Lord, Lord Bird. Local issues and digitisation are fundamental to helping us address poverty in this country.
I will offer one moment of hope before I sit down. If I have achieved anything, I think that one of the small things that I have contributed is building GOV.UK and the government digital service. I mention that partly because it is directly related to access to information and how people can find some of the services for them, but, more importantly, because it is sometimes possible to join up government and policy. When I think back to that project from 2010 to 2015, I ask, what made it marginally successful? There were three things. The first is prime ministerial support; I cannot overemphasise how important it is that a priority comes from the top. That speaks to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Bird; we hear language, but I am not clear that it has ever been a key priority for the Prime Minister to put poverty at the heart of an action plan.
The second is political support and leadership in the Civil Service and in the department. That project was being driven by the noble Lord, Lord Maude, and we also had Civil Service leaders driving it; that took a huge amount of work and more entrepreneurial effort than I have ever had to deploy, but it is possible to join it up.
Finally, we had a clear focus and some measurements and actions at the end of it. That project was flawed, and I do not remind people of it to sound successful or blow my own trumpet—quite the opposite. But it is possible to join up policy and it needed those three things. I leave the Minister with those three things, and I would be interested in his reflections on all of them: local government and its leadership and its ability to join up with central government on these issues; digitisation and not accepting that 95% is good enough, because it is not; and, finally, how we can take those lessons from some of the successful projects in government.
“Father of the fatherless and protector of widows … he leads out the prisoners to prosperity”.
God calls on leaders and Governments to
“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute”;
to
“Rescue the weak and the needy”,
not leave them there. God gives us a vision of a world where we
“let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”.
This sets our poverty in the broader context of world poverty. While tackling our own, we must maintain our commitment to the world’s poorest. We need overseas development aid to be returned to 0.7% now.
During my time in this House, the Government’s approach to poverty reduction has been promoting work as a route out of poverty. Given that the proportion of children from working families living in poverty in the north-east has risen from 56% to 67% over the last seven years, it is clear that work alone is not enough. Low pay and insecure work continue to prevent families being lifted out of poverty. Work is a successful route out of poverty only if it pays a real living wage, as well as providing secure hours and working practices. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for her good examples, but they must be good examples for work to work. What steps will the Government take to further improve the national living wage to be at the real living wage level?
Viewing paid work as the sole route out of poverty fails to recognise the invaluable unpaid work that so many contribute. Raising children is the most important role that any parent ever undertakes. Its importance outweighs that of any paid employment and must be acknowledged by the whole of society as such. Further examples of critical unpaid work include running food banks, caring for those in need and running local sports and creative arts clubs. These are all vital to our society yet receive little recognition for their contribution. We need a different way of thinking, where those contributing critical unpaid work are valued in society and no longer faced with financial hardship as a consequence. Can the Minister say whether there is any major work on re-evaluating the great contribution made by volunteer carers and full-time parents and the wider contribution of unpaid work?
To align poverty reduction policy-making, we also need to remove the policies that continue to push more children into poverty. I highlight the two-child limit, which currently affects 1.5 million children. Its removal would lift 250,000 children out of poverty straightaway. On social security benefit levels, we need the essentials guarantee proposed by the Trussell Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Will His Majesty’s Government support this? There is no single, simple solution to poverty reduction. It is a complex issue and there is not one switch to flick to solve it, but neither will anything change if we optimistically sit back and simply hope that the situation will improve.
As we have heard, England currently has no child poverty strategy and there is no UK-wide one. We have no targets or coherent cross-departmental collaboration. I thank each Minister with whom I have constructively engaged over the years, and those from the opposition Benches. I thank in particular the present Minister, who has been wonderful to work with. My individual meetings with the DfE, DWP, DLUHC, the Home Office, DHSC and the Treasury have shown that knowledge and insight from each department is essential, yet they have also demonstrated the need for a more collaborative approach. There is still far too much silo thinking.
Of equal importance are the clear insights that local government brings from its day-to-day experience of poverty in its communities. There are also those from schools, colleges, charities and faith communities who deal with poverty every day. Small and medium-sized businesses create the essential jobs that help people out of poverty, and chambers of commerce have a very important role. They have insights into the reasons for poverty in specific local settings. Most essential is the voice of those who live with poverty themselves. We need a vision for reducing poverty and a strategy that engages all these actors. Decisions by the Treasury, too often made on short-term rather than long-term economic analysis, regularly fly in the face of the evidence presented by other government departments and those who work on a local level. There must be a fundamental shift in our national thinking. Poverty is complex. It requires not only focusing on income levels but a holistic, preventive approach. Stronger communities, better mental and physical health and improved family relationships all contribute to poverty reduction.
That is the serious bit. As I draw to a close, I thank those who have assisted me throughout my time serving in this House: the wonderful doorkeepers; the staff who serve us in hospitality; the security team; the amazing teams in the clerks’, Black Rod’s and the Lord Speaker’s offices; and all those who serve in Whips’ offices and Bill teams. They are superb. I am also deeply grateful to the Church of England’s very small parliamentary office team, Richard Chapman and Simon Stanley; the public affairs team of the Church of England; and each of my three RAMP assistants and seven parliamentary assistants and researchers from the brilliant Buxton scheme. Without them, I could never have taken part in the life of this House in the way that they have enabled me to do. I shall miss this place and the brilliant work it does in scrutinising, revising and seeking to hold the Government to account. Had there been a different flavour of Government while I was on these Benches, I promise I would have behaved in exactly the same way towards them.
Poverty is a scourge. It needs to be confronted head-on as a national emergency. Jesus warned us not to harm children. He also made it clear that all of us have to enter God’s way of living by placing a child in our midst and learning from their trust and humility. We need a clearer vision for children and for how we confront all poverty, one with determination that requires us all to work together. Only then will we see poverty be reduced. Only then will we ensure that no child in this country grows up without the basic essentials and finally end child poverty.
I now turn to the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, a very important debate about poverty. As Bishop Paul has said, he and I have worked together on the North East Child Poverty Commission, whose report was published last Friday. If the Minister has not seen it, I will happily send him a copy. The commission was established to look at what had happened with our ridiculous rise in child poverty since 2014, which is bigger and deeper than anywhere else in the country.
The person running the commission and several others had thousands of conversations, roundtables and so on to hear what people had to say about poverty in the north-east. The Government’s figures show that 27% of the north-east’s children are living in material deprivation, the highest in the UK. Some 69% of north-east children are living in families with zero or little savings to shield them from economic shocks—again, the highest in the UK. Almost one in five—18%—of children in the north-east are living in families that are food insecure. Again, that is the highest in the UK.
One thing we found in our conversations that is particularly relevant to this debate is that there is a clear evidence base on the links between low income, food insecurity and inequalities for children. The report of the Child of the North All-Party Group says that:
“Research shows that children experience a range of immediate, as well as long-term and life-changing harms from a poor diet and broader experiences of food insecurity, including: lower life-expectancy, weakened immunity, poorer mental health and emotional wellbeing, poorer physical health across a range of health outcomes (including general health ratings, more emergency visits, asthma)”,
diabetes, and so on, and
“poorer educational outcomes (including lower reading and maths scores, more days absent from school)”,
and so on.
In those conversations we also discovered—or had reaffirmed—the vast amount of time, energy, capacity and resources that organisations are having to spend on dealing with the impacts of poverty. It was clear from all of our discussions that there is a vast amount of valuable time, energy, capacity and resource in our region focused every day on dealing with the impacts of poverty and hardship on a growing number of children, young people and families. This includes by organisations specifically set up to do so, like food banks, baby banks, and so on, but also those whose work is being exacerbated and made much more difficult by the impacts of life on a very low income, including social workers, health services, voluntary and community groups and local authorities, as well as some businesses. There are also those whose ability to focus on their core business is being undermined or made more challenging by poverty, such as schools, colleges, youth provision, sports groups and so on.
Beyond the immeasurable costs for individuals, we are therefore talking about a failure for whole rafts of our community and society. It is not just that it affects the individuals—we have heard enough, I hope, to make all of us ashamed about that—but it is those wider issues. It is apparent that the scale of hardship in our region is being masked because much of this work is being undertaken by individual organisations, on their own initiative, using their own increasingly limited budgets, all of which are acutely aware of the resource and capacity they are now allocating to addressing this issue. We talked to schools who are having to wash uniforms at the weekend, because families have no facilities to do so. We talked to schools who are having to give additional support because families do not have heating or food for their children. Schools are doing this from their resource and that is not why they get their money.
If this does not say that poverty affects the economy of a whole region, I do not know what does. That is essentially what today’s debate is about. The economy of our country is diminished and is not growing, largely because—in my view—of the rise of poverty and inequality. Unless we address those, we will not get the growth and development that we need in our private or public sectors. That is the challenge that I am afraid the Minister faces, and that I suspect other Ministers after the election will face. This is the worst crisis that I have known in my political career, and I hope that the Government understand and recognise that they need to take action now.
A long-term strategy that connects the dots is desperately needed, with funding to match. Short-term rounds of funding have led councils to close their schemes and let staff go, only to reopen them at short notice. Many local authorities have closed their schemes entirely. Barnardo’s is calling for a three-year funding settlement for crisis support to embed efficiency in local welfare.
In closing, I return to the immediate issue of the household support fund, which must be an urgent priority for the Government. Can the Minister assure the House that this essential support will not be withdrawn at this critical time, and that this lifeline for households will be maintained to allow the most urgent manifestations of child poverty to be addressed?
It is therefore a privilege that I should make my maiden speech in this debate sponsored by the noble Lord, Lord Bird. It is also an honour to speak in the same debate as my right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham, who has been a tireless campaigner for the economically disadvantaged across our country. Rural poverty is often hidden and can be affected by a wide variety of policy areas. It can also be concealed by statistics. Average income figures for the county of Herefordshire are unremarkable; however, they conceal a huge gulf between the wealthiest and the rest. Recent statistics show that 60% of the population were earning £1,000 a month or less. One-third of 18 year-olds leave the county never to return. There are few opportunities for a well-paid career locally.
It is said that Herefordshire is the poor man’s Cotswolds. I hope that is a model of development we will avoid. The depopulation of rural communities, to be replaced by large numbers of second homes, is not the way to create a thriving countryside. A report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, published in November 2023, highlighted what it rightly describes as a
“chronic shortage of genuinely affordable housing”
and noted the impact this has on social housing waiting lists and the ability of people to stay in their own communities—the challenge here of maintaining the social fabric of our rural communities is acute.
The disparity between rural house prices and rural wages means that the pressure on these communities is particularly severe. This is a classic example of the importance of coherence in government policy, and recent government announcements in this area are most welcome. An unregulated housing market leads, especially in attractive rural areas, to a growth in second homes, Airbnbs and holiday lets, and the pricing of local people out of the market. Such rural depopulation impoverishes community life; we cannot think of poverty simply in financial terms.
The agricultural sector in my diocese is innovative and pioneering, and is one of our largest employers, both directly and in its support industries. However, smaller farmers are struggling. The transition from basic farm payment support to environmental land management schemes post Brexit, while welcome in many of its aims, has not been seamless. The gap in funding, particularly that which occurred at the transition last summer, added to the stress. Access to these schemes is more difficult for tenant and upland farms in particular. Suicides in the farming community in my area approach one per month despite the best efforts of local charities such as We are Farming Minds. This regular tragedy reminds us of the importance of personal welfare, which includes the certainty we all need in order to plan for the future. It is essential for farmers, and essential for the rest of us as they seek to run viable and profitable businesses which produce food for all of us. This is a public good.
Competitiveness must be a level playing field. For example, the UK-Australia free trade deal, the first agreed under the UK’s independent trade policy, opens up UK agricultural markets for Australian produce, regardless of whether or not it is produced to the same standards that are required by law of UK farmers. Henry Dimbleby, who led the Government’s national food strategy, said that a failure to adopt a “core standards” approach to animal welfare and the environment in our pursuit of free trade deals risks
“exporting the cruelty and the carbon emissions abroad”.
I urge the Government to be mindful of these risks in future trade deals.
I hope I may have opportunity to speak in debates on these issues in the future. Poverty is an issue that affects all communities, but in rural areas it runs the risk of being neglected in policy because of a smaller, more dispersed population. I look forward to being a voice in your Lordships’ House for the people of the diocese of Hereford and the thriving of our rural communities.