I hope that what I have to say on this group of amendments will be a little more pleasing, although I do not think it will please everyone on everything. I will divide my remarks into two areas: the first on strategy and targets, and the second on the commission. It is a wide group of amendments, and that is the way they break down.
Starting with Amendment 33, I think that noble Lords who put that forward would accept that we have dealt with that pretty thoroughly when we considered Amendment 25, so I shall not reiterate all of my arguments on that matter. Noble Lords have heard my concerns about the implications of legal targets when the financial figures are so difficult to forecast.
Amendment 31 sets out exactly what information should be in the Secretary of State’s report. I think that I am going to please the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, when I explain where we are. We will publish a strategy on life chances, so that is the noble Baroness’s strategy. We will then publish an annual statutory report on the new measures: I think that is effectively what the noble Baroness is driving at. The Government have produced major new strategies, and I think that noble Lords all around the Chamber will accept that we have tried to transform all the structures of the benefits system and the support we provide for people in a coherent way.
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We are looking at really complicated situations, so just putting in place a statutory obligation on income measures is not the point. In making these changes we are trying to transform society, and that does not work through a kind of tick-box “do this, do that” strategy. That is just not how the world works. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, shaking her head in a mixture of disagreement and puzzlement, but it really is not how the world works. These things are very difficult to work through. Something that is good about our approach is that under this plan, as we spell out these life chances strategies, we will be looking at them every year.
It is a truism that what gets measured is what gets done. The publication of the data showing our progress will be a powerful driver of action. That publication will be transparent and will look at all the root causes, some of which I have outlined; noble Lords may add some others. They include addiction, problem debt and family instability. The approach will enable anyone to hold us to account for the actions we have taken and the progress we have made. It will also enable those who have been involved in the debate to propose other actions if they wish, and I can assure noble Lords that we have had no shortage of advice from interested parties on how tackle these issues and problems. The clear prioritisation of areas for action—namely, our focus on work and education, and annual reporting of progress on transparent measures—are powerful instruments of change. We have set this approach out in primary legislation to best support improvement in the life chances of our children. The Government do not put statutory measures of this sort in place lightly.
I turn now to Amendment 32, which was spoken to by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. It requires the Secretary of State to,
“lay before Parliament a report setting out”,
the action to be taken on behalf of particular groups of children. I have already stated that the Government agree that particular attention needs to be paid to these groups, which include children in care, care leavers, children in homeless families, children at risk of homelessness and children in families suffering from problem debt. I reiterate our commitment, but the key point is that we are already reporting on the progress of these groups in the ways I described when responding to Amendments 28 to 30. In combination, our new life chances measures and the existing reporting mechanisms will drive efforts to tackle worklessness and poor educational attainment for all children.
In Amendment 35, the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, is seeking to widen the annual reporting duty so that it includes a requirement to provide information about how this legislation might impact on the number of children living in fuel poverty and on the life chances of those children, as well as to report annually on the impact of the legislation on the Government’s fuel strategy. We all agree that poverty is a complex issue and the dynamics affecting it are driven by a range of interconnected factors. Fuel poverty is something that the Government recognise already and take extremely seriously.
I think we would all agree with the noble Baroness that living in cold homes can have a negative impact on children. The Government have a strong record of providing information in this area. Statistics on the number of households with children living in fuel poverty in England are published annually by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and are also included in the Government’s fuel poverty strategy as one of the headline fuel poverty indicators. The Government have committed to reviewing and updating this strategy regularly. The requirements that the noble Baroness has in this amendment are already in place in other parts of the Government’s legislation.