Child Poverty

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Teather (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on securing this debate. I am a long-standing fan of the noble Baroness. I worked with her quite a lot when I was a Member of the other place. I have huge admiration for her fearless and courageous advocacy on behalf of, often, children who are otherwise forgotten. I have collaborated with her on many, many issues over many, many years.

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to respond to this debate today on behalf of the Lib Dem Benches, and to have an opportunity to debate with the Minister, who, I recognise, has very deep knowledge and commitment in this area. This is an issue that I feel very passionately about. It is the reason why I made my maiden speech on the issue of child poverty just a few months ago.

There are a number of us here who have, in government, attempted to tackle child poverty. The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, outed herself in her early remarks, and I know she mentioned the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott. When I made my maiden speech, I spoke about the challenges of wrangling a child-poverty strategy across government as being a cross between cat wrangling and giving birth, and requiring an equally miraculous level of commitment to actually bring that to fruition.

The range of contributions today—highly knowledgeable contributions covering such a wide variety of topics—has brought that to the fore. We have heard many noble Lords speak about the moral imperative to tackle this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Kestenbaum, spoke about the role of schools. Language came up, and tone was mentioned by a number of noble Lords. The importance of childcare was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Smith of Llanfaes. Free school meals was an issue raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, and I will return to that in a minute.

A number of noble Lords spoke about how child poverty falls disproportionately on a number of different groups. The noble Lord, Lord Sahota, spoke about ethnic minorities and asylum-seeking families. The issue of families—single-parent families and families that have a disability—was raised by others. The noble Baroness, Lady Paul, spoke passionately about boys and how boys often fare least well. It was a very welcome contribution, I thought, to this debate today.

The noble Lord, Lord Babudu, spoke about the role of private investment, and a number of noble Lords spoke about health from different perspectives. The noble Baroness, Lady Nargund, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, spoke about mental health and obesity; the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, spoke about the impact on ageing. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, spoke about the multifaceted nature of poverty, and she was one of a number of noble Lords who raised the issue of low pay. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, spoke about the cost of education, which is something I want to pick up in a moment.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough spoke about rural poverty, which, again, I think is often missed out from this debate, where we focus particularly on urban areas. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, spoke about the need for an integrated approach and integrated programmes. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, talked about the scale of the challenge, and the noble Lord, Lord John of Southwark, opened his remarks by speaking about the need for some cross-party consensus. I suppose I will kick off there, on the need for cross-party consensus.

I hope the Minister finds me a kind of encourager. I have some areas where I want to say I would like the Government to go further. However, as I said, having had the experience of wrangling a child poverty strategy, I am hugely sympathetic to the challenge involved, so I hope that she will find me an encourager on these issues. I want to begin, like other noble Lords, by acknowledging progress and welcome facets in the child poverty strategy: the tone, for example, as well as involving families who experience poverty. That is hugely important and I want to return to that at the end. I gave my maiden speech in the debate on the Bill to abolish the two-child limit in universal credit, which is hugely welcome, and for which Lib Dems have been arguing for some time. Some 450,000 children will be lifted out of poverty as a result of that.

However, while the child poverty strategy is a welcome direction, it is not an adequate destination. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that even after the measures in the child poverty strategy, the DWP’s own forecast suggests that 4 million children will still be in poverty in 2029-30. There is some disagreement about the number of children who will be lifted out of poverty as a result of the strategy—the Resolution Foundation suggests that it is probably around 300,000—but, either way, it is not enough to celebrate slowing this rise; the country needs to reverse it. There is a question about what we do from a big-picture perspective, there are areas where I hope we might go further and some other areas where I hope the child poverty strategy might be brought into conversation with wider cross-government work, where the child poverty strategy may be the key to our thinking about what else we need to do as a nation.

It seems to me that the single biggest hole in the strategy is that there are no binding targets. Whatever you might think about Scotland’s delivery, in Scotland the statutory child poverty targets have provided a framework to hold Ministers to account. My first question to the Minister is therefore: why are there no binding targets? Are the Government willing to be held to account on this, and will they think again?

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, spoke about a need for a human rights approach. I would argue that child rights impact assessments would be hugely helpful, for example, in helping us understand what is happening.

A number of noble Lords spoke about the benefit cap. I had long-standing prior form on the benefit cap in making myself distinctly unpopular in government. I was not sure whether you are supposed to admit to when you lose battles in government, but the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, began by speaking about battles that she lost in government, and I think it was pretty on the record that I lost that one. I use this opportunity to urge the Government to think again on the benefit cap; otherwise, the good work that has been done with the reversal of the two-child limit in universal credit risks being undone. At the very least, we could lift the rate and raise it in line with inflation.

I just want to talk about free school meals. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester devoted all his speech to this topic, and it was a very welcome and informed contribution. I very much welcome the expansion of free school meals to all families on universal credit, but, again, underregistration risks leaving people behind. The September expansion is a perfect moment to switch to a national opt-out or auto-enrolment system using data the Government already hold—for example, the warm home discount. So my next question to the Minister is: will they think again and introduce a national auto-enrolment alongside this September’s rollout so that no eligible child slips through the cracks?

The child poverty strategy has some measures around school uniform, but I would argue again that we could go further; we could agree a cap on the cost of school uniform, which would make such a difference to so many families.

Lastly, as I read the child poverty strategy, the thing that occurred to me most of all was how so many of these topics feel very similar to the things that we were trying to address in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and yet we are facing into a very different world. I suppose it left me a little nervous about whether the child poverty strategy is being brought into conversation with the big strategies and challenges that as a country we are facing now, around food security, the impact of global conflict and the impact of climate change. All these are going to fall disproportionately on the poorest families, and my view is that it is their perspective that might hold the key to helping us to understand how we as a nation might tackle those bigger challenges. I urge the Government to use what they have already done in their strategy, bringing in the perspectives of those affected by poverty into conversation with a much wider strategy.

Masculinity and Misogyny in Schools

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Can I say how much I am enjoying getting back to this in the next stage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on Monday? We will have the opportunity, once again, to discuss the action that this Government have already taken to understand the concerns that there are about social media and to recognise the different views on how, in detail, we should respond. That is why, on 2 March, this Government launched the consultation on how, not whether, we should take action, with further measures to ensure that children have healthy relationships with technology, mobile phones and social media. It is why we tabled new powers that mean that we can act fast on the consultation’s findings—in months, rather than waiting years for new primary legislation every time technology evolves. I do not think it is unreasonable for a Government to act on the basis of consultation and detailed consideration.

[Baroness Teather (LD)]

My Lords, last week, I attended the Cambridge Disinformation Summit run by the Judge Business School, where a key takeaway for me was that restricting young people’s access to social media is not on its own a sufficient response to the risks that we are discussing today. Does the Minister agree that we need accountability from social media companies on algorithms that promote and target extremist content to both adults and children?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I largely agree with the noble Baroness. It is important that the strong powers within the Online Safety Act are implemented. However, the logic of her argument is that we need to make sure that we support children and young people and our schools to be able to challenge misogyny and avoid falling for the toxic influencers, while strengthening the good values and attitudes that most young people have. That is what we will be supporting our schools to do.

Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Baroness Teather Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Thursday 12th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Teather (LD) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech here during this Second Reading debate. Supporting children and tackling the impact of poverty and disadvantage have been core themes of my work, both in the other place and in my charity and NHS board roles since.

I will turn to the substance of the Bill in a moment and say some personal words about myself at the close. First, I hope noble Lords will indulge me in offering some heartfelt thanks. I am indebted to the many people who have guided me so patiently in my first few weeks. Having done my apprenticeship at the other end, this place is at once both familiar and very different. I am still navigating by reference to glimpses of green carpet that border red, meaning getting anywhere is taking me twice as long as it should.

I am particularly grateful to Black Rod’s team and to the doorkeepers, who made heroic efforts to support my husband, who is a wheelchair user, at my introduction, as they have today. He is here to listen, along with my parents, and I am very grateful to them for being here. I thank the clerks, the Lord Speaker, the attendants and my supporters—my noble friends Lord Dholakia and Lady Kramer—and the youthful staff team in the Lib Dem Whips Office, who are a daily source of facts, sanity and humour.

The Bill is hugely welcome. While some might say that it is not before time, I want instead to recognise the work done by the Minister in this House—the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock—and the Secretary of State in the other place to bring this Bill forward. I served as Children and Families Minister, and I recall the uphill task of co-ordinating child poverty strategy across departmental silos and coalition “differences of opinion” as somewhere between cat herding and global hostage negotiation—skills that might yet come in handy if we end up in protracted ping-pong here.

I am strongly of the view that the removal of the two-child limit in universal credit is the right thing to do. I have always been a sceptic about arbitrary caps in welfare policy, which seem often to be performative rather than strategic. People are made vulnerable when policy cannot flex for the complexity of real life. More than 1.5 million children are currently affected by the two-child limit, denied what they need to thrive and growing up where hunger, cold and uncertainty are daily realities; missing opportunities to join school trips and activities; and leaving them more likely to be bullied at school—something I know from my most recent role leading a children’s charity dedicated to that cause. Poverty affects children in every community, which was the premise behind targeted support through the pupil premium, but this two-child limit falls on regions unevenly and disproportionately on families from Black and ethnic-minority communities, baking in inequality and damaging life chances for decades.

Removing the two-child limit will make an impact on hundreds of thousands of children. But in the spirit of a maiden speech, I suggest gently that mitigation of its forerunner, the benefit cap, which interacts with the high cost of rented housing, might also be needed. This might be, for example, by reviewing the cap annually in line with the cost of living or disregarding child benefit from the total.

I want to say something about language and narrative. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s UK poverty report this year describes the impact of an increasingly toxic public debate on those living in poverty, saying that the

“values of compassion, justice and equity … are too often missing”.

Stigma and scapegoating really matter. Money fills the electric meter, buys the school uniform and pays for breakfast, but it is language that limits expectations, hardens attitudes and severs relationships.

I spent most of my decade-long civilian sabbatical away from politics leading a UK charity in the refugee sector, the Jesuit Refugee Service. I learned much at JRS about the way destitution and homelessness eat away at dignity, but also about the transformative power of relationships and community. Towards the end of my time at the charity, we started a new project to train staff in mediation skills, encouraging them to listen and engage in conversations locally and to learn from people with different, even opposing perspectives about our work. It was experimental in form, but the othering that we had witnessed had been so devastating that we were convinced that we must not contribute to it further.

Our potential to create change and solve problems in this polarised age depends on how well we collaborate with people who do not always share our worldview—resisting the urge to stereotype and being open to the idea that working with people we do not agree with might yield new solutions. One of the great joys of my first few weeks here has been the warm and fascinating conversations with noble Lords from different parties. This cross-party opportunity is a seam that I hope to mine.

I finish my remarks by sharing with noble Lords something very personal. I have spent most of my adult life working with and for people who are sidelined—those who struggle to get their voices heard and their experiences understood. Then, four years ago, I suddenly lost my voice. A random neurological hit knocked out a nerve to my vocal cords, leaving me struggling to speak. It took two years of speech and language therapy at Guy’s Hospital and specialist voice rehab to teach my body to adapt to this state and return a singing and useful voice—help for which I am deeply grateful.

The words of the Letters Patent read by the clerk at our introduction to this House confer on each of us a voice in this place. I understand the privilege of this gift—it is something that my body knows to be true. So I pledge to use my voice here to create space for all those whose voices continue to be silenced and whose experiences are missing from our deliberations. I hope to use my voice to enjoy as many cross-party conversations and collaborations as tea in the Long Room will sustain.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

People who come to my constituency office these days for help with some kind of error in their benefits often spend the first few minutes trying to justify their worth. They usually begin by trying to explain their history of working and that they have paid tax. They are desperate to get over the point that they are not like other benefit claimants—they are not a scrounger. It is perhaps a feature of the way in which the term “scroungers” has become so pervasive in social consciousness that even those on benefits do not attempt to debunk the entire category, only to excuse themselves from the label.

Language matters. Politicians in this place know that, because all of us spend a good deal of time worrying about how everything we say will be reported by the media, just as journalists pore over every fact, comma and noun we give to look for power shifts and personal divisions. Any modern political party devotes considerable money and effort to testing messages with focus groups to see how they would influence voting patters. However, I am afraid we often spend less time considering how our language actually affects people’s lives, choices, values and sense of worth, how they rub up against their neighbours and how society itself functions.

In an atmosphere of uncertainty and limited resources and where every family in this country is struggling, there is a natural tendency to try to find someone to blame for our woes. A fissure already exists between the working and non-working poor. Hammering on that fault line with the language of “shirkers” and “strivers” will have long-term impacts on public attitudes, on attitudes to one neighbour against another. It will make society less generous, less sympathetic, less able to co-operate. The marginalisation of the undeserving poor will place one group outwith society entirely over time and leave them less able to make choices about their lives and to participate. That fragmentation of society, for me, is the spectre of broken Britain, and it is one that we hasten at our peril.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not recognise that the nub of the whole argument is that if we allow benefits to be increased by more than salaries, that will increase the number of people on benefits who are trapped in poverty and unable to afford to go to work?

[Sarah Teather]

I will return to that point in a moment, because I want to make another point about public attitudes first.

For those of us in this place who care about social justice, long-term changes in public attitudes to poverty should give us other causes of concern, because they will make it more difficult for any politicians who come after us to argue for any option for the poor, because public opinion will simply not support it. The irony, of course, is that, as many have said, many of those affected by the Bill are actually in work; many are the same group who have already had a negligible pay rise and are already bumping along at the bottom of the poverty threshold. For me, that is the first of a number of disingenuous comparisons used to argue for the fairness of the Bill. The first is that those affected are out of work, when many more are in fact in work but on low pay. As the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) mentioned a moment ago, many of those are part of the group of people who cycle in and out of work all the time; I see that in my constituency.

The second disingenuous point is about percentages themselves, which fail to take into account the cuts to housing benefit that families in my constituency will be experiencing in the next six months or so as the changes filter through. There are also the changes in April to council tax benefit; they will affect the same families affected by the uprating provisions in the Bill.

The third point is whether percentages mean anything at all. Whatever goal posts are used to measure the percentage change in benefit across time, it is clear that the monetary value of rising average wages is significantly more than that of benefits. Percentages do not buy milk, bread or school uniforms—pounds and pennies buy those things, and it is in pounds and pennies that people will experience a cut.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for giving way. I have sat for three or four minutes listening to her and I have never in my life agreed with her more. She is right about the language of the debate and about the percentages—it is monetary value that is important.

Can the hon. Lady explain to me in any way how the removal of the best part of £6 billion from the economy in the next two to three years will stimulate the economy? How many jobs will it create, if any at all?

[Sarah Teather]

The fourth disingenuous point is probably that cutting the incomes of those at the bottom of the income threshold will help boost the economy. All the evidence says that money put into the pockets of those at the bottom of the income spectrum is most likely to be spent. That is precisely why my party argued so hard during negotiations to ensure that we raised the threshold of tax on the lowest paid.

I do not enjoy voting against my own party, and I cannot vote for the Labour amendment, but with a very heavy heart I shall be voting against the Second Reading of the Bill. I hope that I, and any others who choose that course of action, will give the Government some cause for thought and reflection.