Job clubs in schools 'to tackle child poverty and worklessness' » Central Government » 24dash.com

Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced a £10 million plan to set up job clubs in schools as part of an effort to eradicate child poverty.

Opening a second reading debate on landmark legislation to tackle the problem, she said the move could help lift 100,000 children out of poverty.

The Child Poverty Bill places a legal duty on the Government to work towards meeting child poverty targets by 2020 and sets up a new commission to advise on progress.

Ms Cooper told the Commons: "Today we are announcing more support to help parents hit by the global credit crunch.

"We know that parents are still losing jobs because of the worldwide recession but often second earners don't go down to the jobcentre for help if their partner is still in work.

"And yet that extra cash from their part-time and full-time jobs can still be vital to help pay the mortgage or to keep the family out of poverty.

"Indeed, over 100,000 children could be lifted out of poverty if more second earners were able to work part-time or full-time as the children get older.

"That is why we feel we must do more to help second earners affected by the recession and why we are announcing today a further £10 million to help working mothers affected by the recession and to help more parents into work.

"Those funds will be targeted at 25 local authority areas to set up job clubs in schools to advise parents on getting access to training, finding work or setting up small businesses of their own."

The new legislation "will force governments to come back to Parliament time and again to demonstrate the progress that has been made and it means, ultimately, Government will be at risk of action in court if it has failed".

Ms Cooper said it was "one of the most radical bills that we have debated this Parliament".

She told MPs: "This is a chance for Parliament to make clear that children in the 21st century should not grow up suffering from deprivation.

"That they should not grow up lacking the necessities that most of us take for granted, that allow our children to participate fully in society.

"Things like keeping the house warm, being able to go on a week's holiday, being able to afford a bike to be able to go out and about with friends."

Shadow work and pensions secretary Theresa May said the Government was failing to meet existing targets and labelled the move a piece of "cynical positioning".

Mrs May said: "It is a tragic failure and it is a damning indictment of 12 years of Labour government.

"This Bill represents one of the last acts of a tired government tying a future government to the targets that it has failed to achieve.

"The Secretary of State may believe that that is clever party politics but I say to her that this cynical positioning is undignified and belittles the important issues this Bill should raise."

Mrs May said there was "very little" in the Bill on worklessness, in-work poverty and childcare, as well as housing.

"My main criticism though is a very simple one. I do not believe that simply legislating to end child poverty will make it happen," she said.

"Reaching for the statute book has been this Government's modus operandi since it was elected and we have precious little to show for all the laws and regulations that they have passed.

"Instead of a target approach we need a targeted approach that commits to addressing the root causes of poverty.

"This Bill does not do that nearly as robustly or as comprehensively as it could."

Mrs May conceded there had been "initial success" in tackling child poverty by the Government "but overall it's been a failure".

"It is this one-dimensional approach which relies on means-tested benefits only that is unsustainable and will not result in the progress we all want to see."

She said it was important to recognise the role family breakdown played in child poverty and the Government had to do more to support families and parents living together. More attention should be paid to local enterprise as well.

For the Liberal Democrats Steve Webb said child poverty was a cause and not "yet another benchmark, yet another box-ticking exercise". He welcomed the Bill and the commitment to tackling child poverty.

He hoped ministers would be careful how they presented the Bill to the public: "There is a danger in what is a noble end being oversold and Governments of all sides have a tendency to do that."

Mr Webb said the UK's historical record on tackling child poverty had been "shocking" but the current position was also "very worrying indeed".

Every EU country apart from Poland, Italy and Romania had better child poverty rates than the UK, he said, so the goal of topping that table was "a start but it certainly ought not to be the end of our ambition".

Mr Webb raised concerns that more progress had not been made while the economy was booming, saying: "If we are behind schedule in the good times, what is going to be different about the remainder of the period to 2020 which means we won't just catch up but we will accelerate?"

He went on: "We risk doing a disservice to electors if we sign up to a Bill and all quietly go off and say: 'But of course none of us actually think it will be implemented because we are broke'.

"If that's the way we view it, we should come clean on that."

Mr Webb also called for a mechanism to monitor progress towards poverty targets and said the Child Poverty Commission should be given "more teeth and more resources".

Labour's Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington N) said there was "broad agreement" that the Bill and its targets for reducing child poverty were a good thing.

She added: "Targets alone do nothing to put money into the hands of children who need it and therefore it's what we will do to reach those targets that matters rather than the targets themselves."

Ms Buck called on MPs to convince their constituents about the need to tackle child poverty, saying "none of us" had done a very good job so far.

Labour former minister Sally Keeble (Northampton N) welcomed the Bill but called for more "radical" moves on housing.

She suggested a target that "every family with at least one child normally living with them should have a living room - a room that doesn't count as a bedroom, that should be a room where the family can live, can watch television, where the children can do their homework and there be enough space to have a table so they can sit round it and have a meal together".

For the Tories, David Gauke said: "There is some degree of consensus here, we strongly share the aspiration to eradicate child poverty by 2020.

"We believe that high levels of child poverty reveal a waste of potential in a globalised world where there are opportunities for many to achieve greater material wealth than was possible before. Where there are children excluded from these opportunities they will fall further and further behind.

"It is not good for any of us if we have a section of society excluded from the benefits of what we hope will be growing economy over the years ahead, stuck in a culture of low aspiration and dependency, attaining poor qualifications resulting in a cycle of deprivation where it becomes increasingly hard for any child born into poverty to escape it."

Mr Gauke described the Bill as a "style-over-substance measure".

He said the Tories were "not very impressed" and raised concerns about accountability, asking whether it would be possible for the Secretary of State to be taken to court if the poverty target was missed.

He also said the Bill was a way for the Government to gloss over the fact it was missing the 2010 interim target for eradicating child poverty.

And he told MPs: "We support the aspiration that lies behind the Bill but the Bill itself does contain within it some of the less attractive characteristics of this Government.

"It does look bureaucratic, it does look like a centralising rather than a localising measure and there is one other important point.

"One might expect that a Government would proceed first of all by setting out its objectives, then setting out a strategy on how to deliver those objectives and then delivering.

"But after 12 years this Government has failed to deliver, so it resorts to repackaging its objectives in this Bill without explaining how it will deliver."

Treasury Financial Secretary Stephen Timms defended the Government's record and said "very substantial" progress had been made over the last 12 years.

He also said it was wrong to suggest that fiscal tightening would hinder moves to eradicate child poverty, saying a strategy would be devised which took account of the financial situation.

And he added: "The benefits of what we are proposing far outweigh the costs because creating a fairer society will benefit everybody."

The Bill was given an unopposed second reading.