Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would also like to thank Professor Gordon and Dr. Kenway for sharing their experience and expertise with us this morning. I find your experience very interesting and helpful, in the sense that the approach you take to fighting poverty is employment first. Create employment and make sure that people who are able to work have a job to go to.
My question is in two parts. First, I would like to know what causes the optimism that allows you to set the goal of eradicating poverty by 2020. I understand that the results obtained in the first five years are quite extraordinary. But, as you said yourselves, the point has come where you have reached a plateau, and, for some groups, such as single-parent families and the elderly, the figures are heading in the other direction. That is my first question.
Second, Mr. Gordon tells us that your experience is showing you that about 50% of people in poverty are going to stay poor if we do not change our approach completely, because that 50% is working. That is what I think you are saying.
I would like to know what steps you have taken to support the working poor. Are there government initiatives that require businesses to provide better working conditions, or, for those that cannot, to support them so that they can? How do you handle that?
I also understand—correct me if I am wrong—that all labour issues are matters for Parliament. Are the other three Parliaments, those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, committed to the same extent as the Parliament of the UK as such?