Attached is a patch to fix this - added a missing "\":
--- dh-make-perl.old 2006-10-06 11:37:01.000000000 +1000
+++ dh-make-perl.new 2006-10-06 11:35:26.000000000 +1000
@@ -143,7 +143,7 @@
#my $section = 'interpreters';
my $section = 'perl';
my $depends = '${perl:Depends}';
-my $bdependsi = 'perl (>= ' . `dpkg -p perl|grep ^Version:|cut -f 2 -d \ ` . ')';
+my $bdependsi = 'perl (>= ' . `dpkg -p perl|grep ^Version:|cut -f 2 -d \\ ` . ')';
my $bdepends = 'debhelper (>= 5.0.0)';
my $maintainer = get_maintainer();
my $arch = 'all';
