Comprehensive Spending Review

Lord Bishop of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords—

[The Lord Bishop of Blackburn]

My Lords, very many of us are eager to see the big society, with its vision of neighbourliness, prevail. Neighbourliness requires a particular care for children, who are a gift and not a commodity, and for poorer families. Given that many children and poorer families will be badly affected by the reduction in benefits, can the Minister tell us where this lost support may be found in the future for children and poorer families?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for drawing our attention to the question of children, which I shall come back to. In respect of his question about poorer families, I draw the House’s attention to the new section at the back of the document, which for the first time lays out the effect on the deciles and quintiles of the population of all the measures that we have taken in the spending review and the Budget. It confirms the fairness of the overall construct—namely, that those who can afford to pay more will do so and that the poorest in society are protected.

The spending review will provide additional support to the most disadvantaged children at every stage, particularly in education, and will support social mobility. As I said when repeating the Statement, free early years education will be extended to 15 hours and care will be given to the most disadvantaged two year-olds. Critically, we will introduce a £2.5 billion pupil premium. There will be more generous maintenance provision and a scholarship fund of £150 million to underpin higher education funding for disadvantaged children. The entire spending review has taken fully into account the needs of children, particularly in education. The coalition Government have taken action to protect families. Overall, there is no measurable impact on child poverty from all the model changes for the next two years.