Child Poverty Strategy

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

Important safeguards currently exist within the system to ensure that vulnerable migrant children are protected. I will ensure that my hon. Friend gets the meeting with the relevant Minister that she requests to discuss her concerns further.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

Representing a city that has 20,000 children living in poverty, I strongly welcome the crucial fact that the strategy is not just about the poverty of the family budget, but the poverty of ambition. Too many of those 20,000 children have parents who are in low-paid, insecure work. Will my right hon. Friend tell us what the strategy will do to lift ambition for apprenticeships and skills, changing not just the lives of those children, but the lives of those parents as well?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I know that my hon. Friend cares passionately about ensuring that we have good routes into careers through technical and vocational education, and more apprenticeships for young people in Peterborough. I have been working with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Pat McFadden), on our ambitious post-16 strategy, to ensure that young people, at the start of their careers, have great options when it comes to academic, technical and vocational routes, and today we have been setting out how we, as a Government, intend to deliver more apprenticeship opportunities for young people in Peterborough and beyond.