Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered child poverty and no recourse to public funds.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, on the help I receive from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project and as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on migration.

I would like to start by paying tribute to the organisations in my constituency and across Yorkshire that work tirelessly to help migrant families, including South Yorkshire Refugee Law and Justice and City of Sanctuary Sheffield, and the organisations that provided me with valuable evidence and research ahead of this debate, including the no recourse to public funds partnership, Praxis, COMPAS—the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society—and the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Given the spending review today, the recent announcement on the immigration White Paper and the pending child poverty strategy, this debate could not be more timely. According to recent research by the IPPR, there are an estimated 1.5 million children in the UK living in poverty in families with migrant parents, accounting for more than a third of all children in poverty. Children in families with migrant parents are also more likely to be in very deep poverty, amounting to 21% of migrant children, compared with 8% of other children.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that since 2019, there has been a 92% increase in the number of migrant households experiencing destitution. Despite those shocking statistics, the no recourse to public funds policy—which amounts to a blanket ban on access to the social safety net for the majority of migrants in the UK—remains largely absent from conversations about poverty and inequality.

No recourse to public funds is a condition tied to various immigration pathways: those without status, those seeking asylum, those with “British citizen: children” status, and children in families who have not secured EU settled status. It prohibits millions of people from receiving benefits, including universal credit, child benefit and personal independence payment, and from accessing social housing. The policy disproportionately impacts women, people of colour, low-income households with dependent children where family relationships have broken down, including victims of domestic abuse, and those with disabilities and long-term health conditions.

Research by the Women’s Budget Group found that the risk of living in poverty for migrant women with dependent children is particularly high, as they are more likely to be dependent on their partner both for their right to be in the UK and financially, as their ability to work is often restricted by labour market barriers, access to childcare and NRPF conditions. A study by Citizens Advice found that more than 80% of its clients who sought advice on no recourse to public funds and non-EU migrants’ access to benefits were from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Part of the reason that this policy remains absent from the wider conversations about poverty is the information gap. The Home Office does not collect data on how many children are currently impacted by NRPF in the UK, although I hope the upcoming transition to Atlas will allow the relevant data to be released soon. Estimates suggest that at the end of 2024, there were approximately 3.6 million people with no recourse to public funds conditions.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she agree that the Home Office should not just be collecting and publishing data more regularly but should participate fully in the child poverty review, to ensure that this issue is resolved in the way it needs to be?

[Olivia Blake]

That is absolutely right. I will come on to the review later in my comments, but I thank my hon. Friend for putting that on the record.

The IPPR and Praxis estimate that around 722,000 children are affected by NRPF restrictions, of whom 382,000 are living in poverty. The NRPF partnership found that around three quarters of children subject to NRPF are likely to become permanent residents or British citizens. Also, migrant parents with NPRF conditions do not get the same help with their childcare costs, including the extended entitlement for working parents and universal credit support. That creates a double penalty. Without that support, many migrant parents, especially single mothers, are limited in their ability to work, while simultaneously being excluded from accessing income top-up from the social security system if their earnings fall short.

[Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for taking my intervention, and it is always a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dr Huq. Earlier this year, I held a consultation event on the Child Poverty Taskforce. One of the themes that came out starkly was that many children in migrant families act as interpreters for their own parents, who do not speak English, and often they attend appointments, miss school and are exposed to situations and correspondence that children really should not be exposed to, which adds to the inequality that these young people are facing. Does my hon. Friend agree that this “adultisation” of children really should not be happening?

[Olivia Blake]

Yes, I agree completely that there is huge pressure on young people in migrant families to provide such services. There is also pressure on young carers who are migrants as well, which is another concern. My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. Young people should not experience such situations, but sadly they often do.

IPPR and Praxis found that a significant proportion of migrant parents are held back from working because they face barriers to accessing childcare; currently, 40% of migrant parents do not use childcare, as they or their partner are unable to secure employment. I know that the Government believe that these things are privileges that need to be earned and that migrants coming to the UK should be able to support themselves financially. However, we should not view basic necessities as some kind of reward. They are lifelines that help people to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table and their homes warm, nor should we ignore the fact that migrants already pay into the system through tax contributions.

We also need to view NRPF in the context of wider systemic barriers in our immigration system, such as prolonged routes to settlement, high visa fees and the immigration health surcharge. Together, it all creates a perfect storm whereby families face never-ending cycles of destitution, homelessness and uncertainty. Children should not pay the price for that.

We know that growing up in poverty has terrible short-term and long-term consequences.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate and I thank you, Dr Huq, for chairing it. Does my hon. Friend agree that children should not be penalised in this way, especially when there are delays in determining applications from those with have no recourse to public funds? It is not their fault. In my constituency of Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, the child poverty rate is over 47%, but it would be even higher if we included those children. Why should children be made to suffer just because of a delay in determining people’s applications? Those children would be the future of this country and contribute through the tax system and the development of this country in coming years.

[Olivia Blake]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. That statistic makes a stark point. He also makes a strong point about why the Government should consider these issues in the upcoming child poverty strategy.

We know that growing up in poverty has terrible short-term and long-term consequences, and there is mounting evidence to show the wide-reaching impact of poverty, particularly on migrant children. Children in affected households experience food insecurity, overcrowded housing, barriers to education, and serious mental and physical health risks. Poverty can also impact children’s opportunities to develop their social skills and build meaningful relationships during critical formative years. Therefore, I question the line of argument that says that these restrictions are in place to promote integration.

In their joint inquiry on the impact of immigration policy on poverty, the APPG on migration, of which I am a co-chair, and the APPG on poverty and inequality found that the no recourse to public funds policy is a huge contributor to deep poverty, child poverty, isolation and vulnerability. I am grateful for the ministerial response to our letter about the inquiry, but I urge Ministers to look at some of the findings in the report. Perhaps they could follow up on that point in writing. The findings are unsurprising, given that the widening of the policy was introduced by the former Government, as part of the hostile environment, with the very intention to make life more difficult for migrants in the UK. However, destitution by design policies are not just inhumane, but ineffective and very costly, with local authorities often having to foot the bill.

Councils provide essential safety net support to safeguard the welfare of families who have no recourse to public funds and are at risk of homelessness or destitution. That often leads to local authorities providing long-term support for households, with the average period of support lasting more than 600 days for families with children, and longer for adults with care needs. That places enormous pressure on already stretched local authorities, which receive no compensation or direct funding to support families with NRPF.

The NRPF Network found that, from within the 78 local authorities that supplied information for 2023-24, 1,563 households were being supported by the end of March 2024, at an average annual cost of £21,700 per household and a total annual cost of £33.9 million. In 2023-24, Sheffield city council spent at least £1.2 million supporting people with no recourse to public funds, and it did not get any compensation for that. COMPAS estimates that the number of families receiving local authority support in England and Wales has risen by over 150% since 2012-13, with local authority costs rising by almost £230%.

Despite statutory obligations under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, support for migrant families from local authorities remains very inconsistent. Many families remain locked out of local authority support as the threshold for accessing it is highly conditional, and there can be robust gatekeeping from local authorities—as they try to protect their budgets, I am sure. There is therefore an urgent need to standardise section 17, and to clarify guidelines on financial and housing assistance to ensure consistent support across local authorities.

[Neil Coyle]

Is my hon. Friend also aware that London councils spend about £46 million on providing emergency support to families affected by this condition? It makes a mockery of the claim that the policy is about no recourse to public funds, which is clearly a misnomer when such significant levels of public funds are being used.

[Olivia Blake]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has made that point, because London Councils itself has previously described this issue as a

“direct cost shunt resulting from central government policy.”

The Local Government Association continues to call for this ambiguity to be resolved so that councils can support families affected by NRPF, many of whom it says are at risk of extreme hardship. This is not the edge of poverty; this is deep poverty.

That leads me on to another important point: legal aid. Certain visa holders can submit a change of conditions application to the Home Office to have NRPF conditions lifted, but the application process is complex and often requires legal advice to navigate and complete successfully. The process itself has been found to be unlawful in the High Court on numerous occasions, most recently because of lengthy delays in how decisions are being processed. There is an urgent need to address the long-term sustainability and accessibility of the legal aid system for immigration cases. In South Yorkshire, two out of five legal aid firms have stopped delivering legal aid immigration services entirely, and there was a gap between provision and need of nearly 9,000 cases across Yorkshire in 2023-24. This means that many migrants are being prevented from exercising their legal rights to apply for leave to remain, to change or renew their status, or to lift no recourse to public funds conditions.

In that context, I am concerned about the proposal in the Government’s recent immigration White Paper to extend the qualifying period for British citizenship to 10 years. That will lock more families into prolonged no recourse to public funds status and will inevitably pile more pressure on local authorities to pick up the pieces. We know that high visa costs and constant uncertainty prevent parents from planning long term, and the requirement to reapply for visas also heightens the risk of falling out of legal status. The IPPR found that 82% of migrants who borrowed money for visa renewals were in significant debt. I am also concerned that this short-sighted move undermines integration and creates an ever-growing population of second-class residents.

In a survey of its clients, Praxis found that three in four migrants feel that being on the 10-year route prevents them from feeling that they belong in the UK, despite most having lived here for over a decade. With a consultation on the immigration White Paper expected in the summer, will the Government consider the wide-reaching consequences that extending the qualifying period will have for migrant children, in particular? Has an assessment been made of the number of children and families who are likely to be pushed into poverty as a result of the White Paper’s proposed reforms?

Finally, I will end on the child poverty strategy. I welcome the Minister’s recognition of the distinct challenges faced by migrant children living in poverty and the confirmation that the strategy will include all children across the UK, including migrant children. However, this commitment must be matched by the Home Office’s meaningful involvement in the strategy’s development. The delay in publishing the strategy presents a valuable opportunity, as we now have the chance to turn the page on the hostile environment policy and work towards a strategy that genuinely encompasses all children. The strategy will fall short if it excludes this significant cohort.

Targeted action will be necessary for this group of children, as many levers that might help to lift other children out of poverty will have no impact on them. Given that, can the Minister say more about the cross-departmental work to provide solutions that specifically address this cohort? The lack of systemic data and official figures on the numbers affected by NRPF makes this particularly challenging. How can we deal with the distinct challenges faced by migrant children without knowing how many are affected?

I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us when the Government will provide accurate and up-to-date information on how many families and children are directly restricted by NRPF and how many British-born children are affected by this policy. The Child Poverty Action Group, the UK’s leading child poverty charity, has called for NRPF to be abolished for families with children, and the Work and Pensions Committee recommended in its 2022 inquiry that no family with children should be subject to NRPF conditions for more than five years.

[Tahir Ali]

Does my hon. Friend agree that child poverty is a political choice, and that we as politicians—especially this Government—can take action to address it? Immediate action should be taken to make sure that no one suffers for longer than necessary.

[Olivia Blake]

Yes, I agree. My hon. Friend makes an important point that we have choices. This is not inevitable, and the upcoming strategy is an opportunity that will hopefully allow us to turn the corner for many families.

The all-party parliamentary group on poverty and inequality and the all-party parliamentary group on migration concluded in their report that the Government should limit the NRPF condition, especially for those on routes to settlement, to a maximum of five years. At a minimum, the Government should consider extending child benefit to migrant families with NRPF and expand funded childcare entitlement for working migrant parents.

However, we also have to be honest that the most effective way to lift children out of poverty is to abolish NRPF entirely and to allow families to meet the thresholds for support via the existing means-tested welfare system. I know that this will not be the Government’s position, given their previous stance on this issue, but I ask that as many mitigations as possible are considered for this vulnerable group of children.

According to COMPAS, removing the NRPF restriction for families with children under the age of 18 would lift significant numbers of children out of poverty, and the NRPF Network has found that lifting NRPF restrictions for families with children would result in a positive net value of £872 million over 10 years. Around two thirds of adults in the UK think that migrants should be able to claim the same welfare benefits as British citizens within three years, according to the National Centre for Social Research, which shows that the public are on the side of migrant children.

In our joint statement in the inquiry report, which I have referenced quite a few times and which I hope the Minister has an opportunity to read, the co-chairs and the members of the APPGs remarked:

“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that policy is sometimes designed to push people into poverty in the hope that it will deter others from moving to the UK, even though there is little evidence that this would indeed be a deterrent.”

While reducing poverty should be a policy objective shared by the whole of government, sadly the evidence and research that I have presented today shows that, unfortunately, poverty and migration continue to be treated as completely separate issues. Given the large number of children who are impacted, that is completely wrong, and there should be moves to address that across government.

We can all agree that child poverty has no place in one of the richest countries in the world in the 21st century. I agree with the Prime Minister when he said that action on child poverty will be

“a measure of what this Government does”.

Let us take the opportunity to take the necessary steps to alleviate poverty for all children in the UK, not just those with British passports.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Kruger]

I am sorry if I missed the hon. Ladies’ references to the pull factor, but I simply do not believe that the offer, or the lack of offer, of support has no effect on the demand for places in the UK. I think people will factor in those considerations when deciding whether to apply for a visa here. If we are offering additional public finances, that would make a more attractive offer.

I recognise the hon. Lady’s point about the labour market and the availability of people working in social care, although that is perhaps a topic for another day. The point was also made by the care providers in Swindon I spoke to this morning. They also said that this country could do so much better in supporting and training care workers who were brought up here.

Leaving aside the potential dynamic effect of ending the no recourse arrangements, I do not think the hon. Member for Sheffield Hallam sufficiently acknowledges the pressures on the system that are a consequence of high rates of migration. Studies suggest that around 1 million people are likely to get indefinite leave to remain—estimates vary between 750,000 and 1.25 million— which is 1 million people coming down the pipeline, as it were, and likely to have recourse to public funds.

Because of how the immigration system has worked in recent years, we are talking about people who are overwhelmingly on low wages and who come with dependants, notwithstanding the genuine contribution that many of them will make. Overall, on a pure analysis of the numbers, they and their families will represent a fiscal loss to the country over the time they are in the UK.

Even based on the very optimistic assumptions about lifetime earnings that the OBR uses, the 1 million or so people who are expected to get indefinite leave to remain in the coming years will have a net fiscal lifetime cost to the country of £234 billion. That is what we are looking at with the current system.

[Olivia Blake]

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution, but I want to push back a bit on his comments about what I was implying. There is a net contribution from migrants—we know that to be true—and it is not all about costs. If some of the things I outlined in my speech happened, there would be a benefit of £800 million to the economy. We have to consider it in the round.

[Danny Kruger]

I am grateful for that intervention, and I recognise the complexity of the subject we are discussing. The hon. Lady has cited evidence that contradicts mine. I need to look into the study she mentions, because my strong understanding is that, on the basis of the overall immigration we have welcomed in recent years—and, frankly, it is my party that is responsible for it—the net fiscal effect is negative.

Of course, there are many migrants who contribute economically, and there are many migrants who contribute even if they are not contributing economically; not everything is counted in pounds and pence. But if we are talking about the fiscal effects, I am confident in saying that, based on the number of people expected to achieve indefinite leave to remain, who the hon. Lady presumably wants to have recourse to public funds earlier, we are looking at a significant increase in the financial burden.

I want to acknowledge the point that the hon. Lady and other Members have made: the current system shunts costs around the system. The consequence of people living in poverty might be that the Department for Work and Pensions does not bear the cost, but other parts of the public system do—local authorities most of all. That is not an argument to say, “In that case, let the DWP provide the money,” because overall, we would be spending a lot more, and as I said, inviting more people to come if we did that. However, I acknowledge that it is not as if these costs are not borne at all; some of them are borne elsewhere.

I want to end by making a very obvious point. Our welfare system remains one based on contribution in principle and, to a certain degree, in practice, in so far as the national insurance system still exists. In the public mind, there is rightly an expectation that, for the sake of fairness and trust in the system, we should maintain an arrangement whereby welfare is funded by and is for the benefit of citizens of this country. There are, of course, many exceptions to that—other people make contributions, and other people are eligible for support—but that is the basis on which our system depends.

My strong view is that the proposal by the hon. Member for Sheffield Hallam, echoed by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman)—and I think the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), made a similar point—effectively to scrap the no recourse to public funds arrangement would terminally undermine, weaken and eventually destroy the basis of our welfare system, which is that people pay in and receive.

To conclude, I look forward to the child poverty strategy. If we are serious about reducing child poverty, including for those children living in migrant families who are here now, we need to reduce the flow of low-wage families into the system in the first place, whether from abroad or through our own failure to support families in this country. That means extending the qualification period for ILR, which my party has suggested, and it is good that the Government are now considering following suit.

We should obviously be helping families with their finances through meaningful and effective reform of the welfare system. We should be supporting the community infrastructure that gives support to families and young people, and we should be creating well-paid jobs through an economic policy that stimulates growth—not taxing jobs out of existence, as the Government are sadly doing. Those are the best ways to support children in poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Olivia Blake]

It has been really helpful to hear from other Members on a number of issues. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) spoke about the inconsistency in local authority support. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) painted a vibrant picture of the community she represents and the deep poverty felt by the migrant communities within it. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for speaking so passionately about child poverty. He spoke about the use of food banks and the mental health impacts of poverty on children in particular, which I was very moved by. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) made it clear that NRPF deepens the poverty that young people experience, and highlighted the opportunity that we have with the child poverty strategy.

I thank the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), for her focus on free school meals. That issue has been addressed but it points to a challenge: if the move to free school meals is based on receipt of universal credit, we need to ensure that young people with no recourse to public funds are not lost in that, because we won that battle in the last Parliament during covid to ensure that they could get access to free school meals. We just need to make sure that their eligibility does not slip through the cracks if there is a different way of coming up with the numbers of who is eligible and who is not.

I thank the shadow Minister and congratulate him on his first outing—

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Actual Minister!

[Olivia Blake]

The acting actual Minister. I congratulate him on his first time at the Dispatch Box. I was really heartened by some of the things he said, but once again, I want to make sure that all the measures in the child poverty strategy take into account the fact that these people are not eligible through means-tested criteria, so support based purely on those will not benefit these children. I think the Minister has heard that point and the many others that have been made today. I thank him for taking that back to the Minister responsible, and I look forward to reading more on this issue as the months draw closer to the child poverty strategy being developed.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered child poverty and no recourse to public funds.