Human Resources committee  I was going to say I personally think the approach that is being taken in Canada is a very good approach. I think fuel poverty is important. Housing is crucial in the U.K., although maybe not so crucial in the Canadian context. Another basic utility, like the cost of water, is also something that probably needs to be looked at.

Human Resources committee  I agree with Peter. All political parties across the U.K. are signed up to the idea that poverty needs to be reduced and/or eradicated. The Labour government has set its stall out that it should be judged on how well it does, and other parties have responded by taking poverty seriously and testing the government on its claims.

Human Resources committee  Do you want me to answer that, Peter, or do you want to?

Human Resources committee  The U.K. government has rejected the idea of using budget standards in order to test the adequacy of the income support rates. In the past in Britain, with the work of Booth and Rowntree, these kinds of studies were used widely. Rowntree's work in the 1930s was used to set the national assistance rates at the foundation of the welfare state.

Human Resources committee  I'm sorry if I misunderstood your question. I wasn't trying to deliberately misunderstand it. I agree with you entirely. It is obviously far better to help people to help themselves than to give them some kind of minimum income support every week. However, these policies can often be very expensive.

Human Resources committee  Again, to answer that, the U.K. has had legislation on equal pay and sex discrimination since the early 1970s. This legislation is effective as far as it goes in individual cases, in that if individual cases are taken, they're often won. But it's ineffective in that it hasn't tackled the underlying problem, which is that individuals often can't afford to take the cases or don't have access to the knowledge they would need.

Human Resources committee  Shall I answer that? Illiteracy is a major problem—not not being able to read at all, but functional illiteracy. It's quite high in the U.K., although it's hard to get comparative statistics in this field. There are partnerships between government nationally, locally, and in the voluntary sector, but the partnerships between the governments and the business sector are much reduced.

Human Resources committee  The U.K. government hasn't always, now or in the past, spent a lot of money policing the welfare system. With any welfare system, there will be people who try to get around it, cheat it, and use it when they don't really have a need. But that tends to be a very small percentage.

Human Resources committee  I was going to agree with Peter. The growth in lone-parent families is a long-term trend, not just in the U.K., but across Europe. You're absolutely right that one of the leading causes is financial stress. But I'm also dubious that reducing financial stress would reduce the rate at which lone-parent families form, because they form for a whole range of reasons.

Human Resources committee  As Peter said, and as has been said before, the policy to eradicate fuel poverty by 2018 is looking unlikely to be met; certainly the interim targets are. At the moment, about 4,000 people are employed to go into houses and implement the energy-efficiency measures of improving the windows, insulating the walls and the roofs, changing the light bulbs to more energy-efficient ones, and carrying out other such policies.

Human Resources committee  There are two planks to that. There are some authorities, like local government authorities—you need local government involved in these policies—who are trying to start what we call “investing to save”, so giving people the information on how they can invest their money in energy efficiency and therefore save in the long term.

Human Resources committee  Again, to directly address your question, I think fuel poverty should be an integral part of any anti-poverty strategy in all countries. Even in Africa we know that one of the big problems African households in the poorest parts of Africa have is they don't have enough money for cooking fuels.

Human Resources committee  This comes back to the valuing of unpaid work to a certain degree, in that in the past, particularly in smaller towns and urban villages, there were women who had time to support people in the community, caring for their neighbours and helping by volunteering. With the need for women, as well as men, to go into the labour force to maintain their families, people do not have the time to do the level of voluntary activities in helping their neighbours as they have in the past.

Human Resources committee  The tiered approach, as I said, came out of the consultation. The first tier is a European Union-wide one, used in all 27 countries, and it refers to income below 60% of the median equivalized income. That is an EU-wide measure. The equivalization scale would probably not be appropriate to Canada, but as a relative income and equality measure, it's as good as many—although Canada has equally good measures with its low-income cut-offs, the market-based budget standards, and other methods I know you're developing.

Human Resources committee  One of the central barriers to women going back into the labour force has been the gross inadequacy of affordable child care in the past. The government has pursued a number of policies to try to make child care more affordable, including a national day care network, but also vouchers for nurseries, and a range of other policies.