My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for securing this debate and all noble Lords who have spoken. Before I say anything more, I add my reflection to those of my noble friend Lady Lister and the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, in memory of Lord Field. He was an example to all of us of what it means to take a whole lifetime and yet, at the end, never cease to be outraged by the level of child poverty in a rich country. We all owe him a debt.

Tonight’s debate has highlighted the multifaceted nature of poverty. Whenever we have debates on poverty, there is always a temptation for some people to say that it is not about money and other people to say that it is only about money. Manifestly neither is correct. It is not just about money but it is not not about money either. The noble Baroness, Lady Janke, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln and other noble Lords made a very clear point of explaining what happens when you simply do not have enough money. If that is the case, all the strategies and all the preventive work in the world does not help you feed your kids that night; you simply cannot afford to do it.

On the basic level of access to resources, Britain is not in a good place. Over a fifth of our population lives in relative poverty. I know that the Government prefer absolute poverty as a measure, probably because it normally falls as real incomes rise, but, in the latest statistics in the document Households Below Average Income, we learned that the share of people living in absolute poverty is going up again, as the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, pointed out. There are 600,000 more people, half of them children, living in absolute poverty, in what is still one of the richest countries in the world by global standards. We should not be in this space.

Look at how this cashes out. The IFS has been pointing out that the number in material deprivation rose by 3 million in the three years to last year. In that same time, the proportion of those who could not adequately heat their homes jumped from just 4% to 11%. I must say to the Minister that, although the Government chose to give people cost of living support, they gave the same amount of money to everybody, whether a single person living in a studio flat or somebody with a family living in a larger house. As a result, the official statistics said:

“Incomes for those with children reduced the most. This reflects the flat nature of the cost of living and additional support payments, meaning for larger households they are split between more household members”.

Have the Government reflected on the best way to support people in these circumstances?

I fully accept that it is about not just incomes but support and opportunity. But child poverty has combined with the impact of 14 years of public service neglect, frankly, and the differential impacts of the pandemic to produce an attainment gap between children who experienced deprivation and their peers, with a lifelong impact on their life chances.

What should happen now? The last Labour Government lifted 2 million children and pensioners out of poverty. I know the noble Lord, Lord Bird, said at the start that he thinks, essentially, “A plague on all your houses. None of you has done anything”, but I am proud that the last Labour Government introduced Sure Start. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, pointed out, not only did it have an effect at the time but children had better GCSEs later as a result of having been part of Sure Start back then. I had a privilege of being part of the Treasury team working with Gordon Brown on questions of poverty when Sure Start was being introduced.