Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds

Keir Mather Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Keir Mather (Selby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam (Olivia Blake) for securing this incredibly important debate. She has a formidable record of advocating for the rights of migrants in this place, and does so on behalf of her constituents in Sheffield, who share her belief in safety, security and dignity for all who live in our country.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and other hon. Members who have spoken so passionately in this important debate. The speeches made by hon. Members on both sides of the House have shown the real and emotive human stories that lie at the core of this policy, and the delicate balance of priorities that any Government must maintain to provide dignity to those who seek to build their lives in the United Kingdom while maintaining an immigration system that is managed and fair, and that, importantly, commands the support of the British public.

I will come to some of the specific points that hon. Members have raised, but I will first briefly set out the Government’s position in broad terms. The House has ably demonstrated its familiarity with the details of the long-standing policy in question, but I will none the less provide some necessary context. The no recourse to public funds policy seeks to ensure that those coming to the UK do so with the ability to support themselves and their families. That is to ensure that migrants can begin building their lives in Britain while avoiding unexpected pressures in the welfare system.

When applying for permission to enter or stay in the UK, most migrants must demonstrate that they can financially support both themselves and their dependants. On that basis, a no recourse to public funds condition is attached to their permission to enter or stay. That means that most temporary migrants will not have access to benefits that are classed as public funds. Those in the UK without an immigration status who require such a status are also subject to the NRPF condition. There are certain specific exemptions to the NRPF condition—for example, certain benefits, such as those based on national insurance contributions, may still be accessed.

As part of the NRPF policy, there are a number of safeguards in place to protect vulnerable migrants. For the purposes of this debate, I will outline the safeguards in place to protect migrant children specifically. First, local authorities have a general duty, as imposed by children’s legislation, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need in their area. Hon. Members have noted some of the difficulties that local authorities face in doing that work, and I will take those away from this debate. That support does not depend on the immigration status of the child or their parents, and as such local authorities can provide basic safety net support through financial assistance for those most in need.

Although asylum seekers and their dependants are not typically eligible for mainstream benefits, where they are at risk of destitution, the Home Office has a statutory duty to provide basic accommodation and a cash allowance to cover their other essential living needs. Support generally consists of basic accommodation and a standard weekly allowance that is reviewed on an annual basis to ensure that it remains sufficient. Additional financial support is also provided to pregnant women and young children to encourage healthy eating. Such support is at a level equivalent to that provided for the same purpose to British citizens on low incomes. Additionally, asylum-seeking children receiving that support are entitled to free healthcare, schooling and school meals.

As was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam, migrants here under the family or private life routes, the “Appendix Child Relative”—CRP—route, or the Hong Kong British national overseas route have the option to apply for a change of conditions to have the NRPF condition lifted for free. My hon. Friend also ably described a lot of barriers to people seeking to access that scheme, which are important to takeaway, especially in how they relate to people’s ability to speak English and navigate the world of legal aid.

Migrants who have been granted leave to remain under the Homes for Ukraine, Ukraine family and Ukraine permission extension schemes all also have recourse to public funds. If there are particularly compelling circumstances, discretion can be used to lift the NRPF condition on other immigration routes.

Further to that, migrant children subject to the NRPF condition have access to various initiatives that are in place across the United Kingdom to support disadvantaged children. Those include free school meals, which are subject to certain eligibility thresholds; funding for schools to support disadvantaged children; 15 hours per week early years entitlement for disadvantaged two-year-olds in England; 15 hours per week early years entitlement for three to four-year-olds in England; support for children with special educational needs and disabilities; and local authority grants for help with the cost of school uniforms for low-income families. The Home Office continues to work across Government and with stakeholders to review and adapt the support given to disadvantaged migrant children, in line with evolving policies and legislation.

I turn now to some of the issues raised by hon. Members in the debate. The first is the issue of data collection, which was discussed very ably by hon. Members on both sides of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam noted the adoption of the Atlas casework system, which will automate a large proportion of casework and could create new opportunities for data collection overall.

The ability to collect data about the total number of people who are part of the scheme is challenging. The Home Office works with stakeholders who produce that data, but work is ongoing within the Home Office to gather information and explore what can be provided as evidence. As I am not the Minister responsible for this policy, I cannot comment in specific detail about how that process will operate, but I wanted to assure my hon. Friend that that work is ongoing.

My hon. Friend also ably raised the issues regarding application processes for the lifting of conditions and the language barriers that migrants can face; those points were also powerfully made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson). My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam also raised the issue of British-born children not having access to public funds. In that set-up, there is usually one parent who can claim public funds, but I hope to provide her with some reassurance about where that is not the case when I talk later about how the no recourse to public funds system will intersect with the Government’s child poverty strategy.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) was right to predict that we might have a difference of view on NRPF and its merits as a whole, but she also talked about the human outrage that in this country there are still young people and children who display signs of malnutrition and rickets. The Government are steadfastly committed to eradicating the scourge of those diseases right across our United Kingdom through, for example, the roll-out of free breakfast clubs in primary schools across the country. Extending free school meals to young children whose parents are in receipt of universal credit will mean that half a million more children across the United Kingdom will have access to free school meals, which will also have an enormous impact.

The stuff that the Government are doing around the edges will also have an enormous impact on the food poverty that children experience every day. I point to the £13 million that was recently allocated to 12 charities to ensure that food grown by British farmers is provided as quickly as possible to children facing food poverty. It is such work, writ large, that will allow us to make a dent in this scourge.

The individual cases that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North spoke about are particularly distressing; I am certain that they will have shocked everybody in this Chamber. I am not sure when she received the correspondence from the Home Office that she referred to—[Interruption.] She indicates that it was under the previous Government. If she would like to reach out again on that specific issue, or on any other casework matters, I will be very glad to ensure that that information is passed along to the relevant Minister.

The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), who is no longer in his place, asked whether the Home Office will have a role in the development of the child poverty taskforce, which I will turn to later. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley (Tahir Ali) also made very important points about the impact of child poverty in his constituency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) spoke with characteristic experience, expertise and passion on the plight of people in her constituency, particularly the children in poverty. I politely and respectfully disagree with her about the extent to which the Government are committed to tackling the scourge of child poverty across our country.

The child poverty taskforce will report later in the year, because it wants to produce a long-term and holistic approach to tackling this scourge and the details need to be right. However, that does not mean that we have been unable to take concrete action to make a real dent in this awful problem. I point to the extension of free school meals to half a million more children, which will lift 100,000 children in England totally out of poverty; supporting 700,000 families through the fair repayment rate on universal credit deductions; a national minimum wage increase for 3 million workers; rolling out free breakfast clubs in our primary schools; and the household support fund being extended until March next year at a cost of £742 million. In my view, those actions will have a concrete impact on child poverty.

[Kim Johnson]

I appreciate my hon. Friend taking my intervention, and the things that he just mentioned are great. In London, Scotland and Wales, there are universal free school meals. However, schoolchildren from my constituency sent postcards to the Prime Minister last year, asking, “If you have them in London, why can’t we have them in Liverpool?” Breakfast clubs are great. I have one of the poorest constituencies in the country. One school in my constituency has free breakfast clubs, and the only reason why it can do that is that it has been doing it for a long time. Setting up a breakfast club is a problem for a lot of schools; it costs money, time and effort, in terms of changing school rotas. So although breakfast clubs are great, we need to go further. We need to be big and bold. The Sure Start programme was big and bold, and we need to do something similar.

[Keir Mather]

My hon. Friend is right to point to the achievements of the last Labour Government in making progress on this issue. She is also right to hold my feet to the fire and say that no distance is too far when it comes to tackling child poverty. That needs to be at the core and be the philosophy of everything that this Labour Government seek to achieve. At the same time, though, we need to recognise the progress that we are making, get behind it as a Government and be able to action the art of the possible in the immediate term. Supporting those policies will mean that, due to the increased roll-out of free school meals, 100,000 children will not be in poverty who otherwise would have been.

I turn to the comments from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). When I made my maiden speech in the House of Commons in an Adjournment debate, he was uncharacteristically not in his place, so I am very grateful that we have had the opportunity to interact with one another two years down the line. He is right that the scourge of child poverty is present right across the United Kingdom, and that a child growing up in Northern Ireland who is facing that issue needs just as much support as one growing up in England, Wales or Scotland. As someone from a party that wants to improve the life chances of children across the entire Union, I think that point is incredibly well made. That is why, when the child poverty taskforce reports later in the year, there will be a nationwide strategy to improve the outcomes and life chances of people across the United Kingdom.

The hon. Member also pointed to the incredibly important issue of the impact on educational attainment for children living in poverty, and especially food poverty. It is an outrage that children in this country are unable to learn because they are too hungry to focus in class, and he made that point incredibly powerfully.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) similarly made an important point on that subject, and she raised the important issue of delays in the asylum backlog, which the Government are laser-focused on driving down. I remember how powerful her maiden speech in the House of Commons was, and how it touched on experiences, both in her life and in her constituency, relating to the impact of hardship. Her points today were incredibly well made.

I turn to the child poverty taskforce. As many hon. Members have ably said, a single child living in poverty in Britain is one too many. Tackling this scourge and providing every child in Britain with the ability not just to get by, but to live a happy, rich and fulfilled life is at the core of this Labour Government’s mission for our country.

The child poverty taskforce was announced in the summer of 2024, with the objective of improving children’s lives and life chances and tackling the root causes of child poverty in the long term. Poverty scars the life chances of our children. In the 14 wasted years of Conservative Government, child poverty numbers increased by 900,000. We continue to grapple with that legacy today, with 4.5 million children now living in poverty in the UK and 1.1 million children using food banks to eat.

I am pleased to confirm that children whose families are in scope of the NRPF policy will be included in the child poverty strategy. Officials are working closely with the Cabinet Office and with officials across Government on the detail and delivery of this new initiative, and specifically its application to children who are subject to NRPF. The Government are grateful to stakeholders for their support in facilitating discussions to build our understanding of child poverty among migrant families. That included hearing from those families themselves, to listen to the challenges they face and to have meaningful discussions on possible solutions.

The Government have recently announced, via the immigration White Paper, a review of family policy, and the findings from this taskforce will be utilised for future policy development in this space. Work in this area remains ongoing, so I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam will understand that I am not in a position today to offer substantive comment on the detail. But I can say that the Minister for migration and citizenship, my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), is meeting her counterpart in the Department for Work and Pensions next week to discuss in more detail what the Home Office’s role will be in delivering the child poverty strategy.

To conclude, the NRPF policy is, and will continue to be, a means by which we maintain a managed but fair immigration system. Temporary migrants coming to the UK are expected, in general, to support themselves and not rely on Government support, but it is right that the policy is continually reviewed and assessed for its impact, particularly in relation to migrant children. This is something we take incredibly seriously, and I point to the Home Office’s involvement in the child poverty taskforce as evidence of the Government’s continued commitment to protecting vulnerable children.

I offer my thanks to all my hon. Friends and Members across the House who have participated in this debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam for securing it. These are sensitive, complex issues and it is right that we discuss them thoroughly and carefully. I believe that has very much been the case today.