Child Poverty: Faith-based and Voluntary Sector Organisations

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Lincoln]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to facilitate consultation and collaboration with faith-based and voluntary sector organisations to deliver the Our Children, Our Future: Tackling Child Poverty strategy, published on 5 December 2025.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are turning the tide on child poverty. This requires consensus, partnership and shared action. Government cannot achieve this goal alone. Input from children and families, charities, experts and organisations, including faith-based and voluntary sector organisations, was vital to developing our child poverty strategy. These organisations are the bedrock of our communities. We plan to continue to work in partnership, including with faith groups and voluntary sector organisations, to build on and galvanise action.

[The Lord Bishop of Lincoln]

I thank the Minister for her Answer. I know she is deeply aware that faith communities play a vital role in supporting children and families. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby was grateful for her visit last year, and I look forward very much to her forthcoming visit to Grimsby. However, I am concerned that faith is not mentioned more prominently in the Government’s child poverty strategy—indeed, it is not referenced at all in chapter 2, “Reducing Child Poverty in Partnership”—so I ask the Minister to say more about how faith organisations will be vital to codelivery and how the Government intend to take further steps to draw on the local knowledge, experience and ongoing action of faith communities in order to implement their strategy and drive down child poverty.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for mentioning the visits: I had a fantastic visit to Derby, invited by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, meeting a range of faith organisations, and I very much look forward to coming to Grimsby with him. The Government are committed to harnessing the power of faith and belief for national renewal, and we know that the insights of faith communities play a key part in informing and shaping policies; they did so in relation to the child poverty strategy. That has not stopped with poverty. For example, the Minister for Employment has met with Church Action on Poverty, and the Minister for Social Security is going to speak at the ChurchWorks summit specifically on opportunities for collaboration around the child poverty strategy with faith organisations.

Whenever I visit a faith organisation, I learn something wonderful. I visited a brilliant Jewish charity a couple of weeks ago at the recommendation of the noble Lord, Lord Polak. I was so glad that I did, because I learned what was happening on the ground to support individuals facing a wide range of challenges in ways that the Government would struggle to engage with. So I reassure the right reverend Prelate that we cannot do without those insights, and we will make sure that we get them.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is right to raise the role of faith-based organisations, but I wonder if the Minister is aware of the role of cultural organisations and cultural participation in reducing the impacts of child poverty. I think of personal and social networks, employability skills and self-confidence. To see this in action, will she take a look at Culture Start in Sunderland, which is developing a range of local partnerships with the specific aim of using cultural participation to ensure that all children, however they are born, have the option to benefit from the advantages that cultural participation brings?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for a great question. I agree with her point that the role of cultural organisations and the opportunity to participate and engage with others to do collective action in different ways are crucial to children’s development—and often those are the kinds of opportunities that children from wealthier families have that others would not. In response to the specifics, Sunderland being very near to Durham, I would be delighted to learn more about what is happening there. I need to go and find out. My office can take note.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply about how the charities will work, but what worries me is how small, local charities will be included in this. It rather looks as if we are encouraging the larger charities to do all the good work that they do but, as the other questioners said, there are a lot of local charities. I would like to know that they are going to be included in this process.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

That is a great question, if I may say so—there are some good questions coming out today. We absolutely are not interested in talking solely to large charities. We are interested in talking to them too, but we need to engage locally. As I am sure the noble Lord knows, one way that this Government are going about our work in the DWP is that we are devolving quite a lot. We are aware that much of the work we want to do can be done much better at a local level. For example, it is much clearer in Manchester than it is in London what should happen in Greater Manchester. So we are devolving and encouraging local organisations in many of the pilots that we are running to engage with local charities, but we will also often engage with organisations that themselves are umbrellas, which can bring together local charities to come and talk to us.

The noble Lord makes a really important point. Having worked in the voluntary sector myself for a long time, I know that there are some insights that national charities give that are really helpful, but other things you find out only when you go to the coalface. Just last week I visited a small charity in Fife that is doing amazing work, and I learned things from it that I would not have learned from the biggest charity. So that is a good point, and I take it on.

[Lord Rees of Easton (Lab)]

My Lords, when I was mayor of Bristol, we put tackling child poverty at the centre of our approach. We sought to deal with issues of real substance—evidence-based issues that determine the life chances of our children and young people: parental background, income, class, housing stability, family stability, education and health. Does the Minister agree that it is not helpful to set up frameworks that might invite people to believe that the life chances of British-born young people are determined by the fortunes of children born to foreign parents?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend my noble friend for the work that he did in Bristol, the leadership he showed and all the excellent work that was done there. I am absolutely clear that if we are to invest in the children of our country, we need to invest in all the children of our country, make sure that we reflect their needs and give them the opportunity to thrive within the context of all the things I said on the previous Question. I take the opportunity to say that I do not think these things can be done just by government. The examples he gave are a reason why Whitehall does not always know best. Trying to pull only the levers in my department will not give us the results we need. I absolutely welcome the opportunity to learn from what Bristol has done, and from what other metropolitan and mayoral authorities are doing and will carry on doing.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, parental employment, family stability and early intervention are key to reducing child poverty, but there are currently around 800,000 job vacancies in the UK. How exactly are the Government helping parents to get into work? We have jobs. The employees and employers want them to work together.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The noble Earl makes a really good point. That is what my department is for. One of the reasons why we are reinventing the whole way that jobcentres work is to be able to make sure that we can help these individuals get ready and take those jobs. We have real opportunity out there, but if we are to hit the kind of employment targets we want, we must give the people who are farthest from the labour market the chance to get at those jobs. We must tackle the barriers that stop people getting those jobs. In the case of parents, those barriers can be quite significant. If you are a single mum with two kids trying to afford childcare, to find work that fits around what you do and to get training and skills, then that is a challenge. Our work coaches can work with that mother, help her to get the skills she needs, to find childcare and to get help with that childcare, get her skilled up and get her out there. That shows the children what they can achieve in turn, and everybody benefits. He is absolutely right; this is the way forward.

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that it would make a helpful contribution to tackling child poverty if the Government were to lift the ban on asylum seekers taking paid work?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government must make an appropriate challenge. If somebody becomes a refugee, they have all the entitlements that that brings, but while the asylum process is going through they are supported and not able to work. We are trying to make sure the immigration policy is appropriate and puts in place the appropriate incentives and processes. I understand the point she makes, but the challenge in asylum is to make sure that only the right people apply, that we process them as quickly as possible, that we make the right decisions and that we then support people who become refugees to rebuild their lives.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, faith-based and voluntary sector organisations place great emphasis on listening to the voices of lived experience. I commend the child poverty team for having done so in developing the child poverty strategy. Can my noble friend tell us what the plans are for the next stage of involving people with lived experience of poverty in the implementation and monitoring of the strategy?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a really important point. Any of us who met people with lived experience as part of this process have learned things that we will never forget. The most memorable one for me was when I met a young woman. When she was a child, her family was evicted from social housing. It was a very difficult experience. She was part of a project that used her experience to talk to decision-makers. She was asked to talk to the senior person at the social housing association that had evicted her. As a result of hearing her story, the housing association changed its policy on managing rent arrears. Instead of focusing just on how to evict people, it focused on how to spot problems early, to stop people getting into trouble, to protect the family and to enable them to carry on and thrive. That was such a great example, and every time our officials learn this they know that we are hearing things that we will carry on doing. The Timms review has been co-produced with people from disabled organisations, the universal credit review has had extensive engagements, and the child poverty unit in the DWP will carry on doing that too.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, the Government deserve credit for developing a strategy to tackle child poverty, but does the Minister accept that there has to be a partnership between parents and the state? The state can carry out its responsibilities in tackling poverty, but parents must ensure that their children attend school regularly, with a real commitment to their education.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I could not agree more. The noble Lord makes an excellent point. I realise that, from his experience, he will have seen this from all sides. In the end, it is not the job of the state to raise children—parents raise their children. The job of the state is to support families to give them the skills and support they need to enable them to do the best job they can. I have worked with families in different circumstances. In my experience, parents want to do the best for their kids but sometimes life can be tough. Our job in government is to make it possible for them to be the best parents they can and give children the best possible start in life. That means going to school on a regular basis—no exceptions unless absolutely necessary—with children always turning up and doing their work, then things will be okay.