Oral Answers to Questions

Michelle Donelan Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point, and he is absolutely right. National statistics, on a number of measures, have shown child poverty falling. In particular, we have seen 200,000 children over the past few years move out of absolute poverty.

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

For too long, parents have been able to hide their earnings from their child maintenance payment calculations, creating and adding to child poverty. What action are the Government taking to stop this?

[Kit Malthouse]

As my hon. Friend knows, the child maintenance system was put in place to enable greater co-operation between parents, on the basis that that often results in a much better outcome for children, but there are parents who fail to do that, and for those circumstances, we have invested significantly in the financial investigations unit of the Child Maintenance Service. We will be consulting further on what more we can do to strengthen our enforcement powers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

The position has not changed. The Government do not intend to change the Pensions Act 1995, or the 2007 and 2011 Pensions Acts. I would point out that a £1.1 billion transitional arrangement was put forward in the 2011 statute.

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

Some 70% of the rise in UK employment involves higher-skilled jobs. This is true in Wiltshire, which expects more than 2,500 jobs from Dyson alone. What work is the Minister doing with other Departments to tackle the science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills gap in the UK, so that Wiltshire can benefit from those jobs?

[Alok Sharma]

I have started to have conversations with ministerial colleagues, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we need to work as one Government to ensure that high-skilled jobs are created across our country.