Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group Child of the North, entitled Child Poverty and the Cost of Living Crisis, published on 24 January; and what steps he is taking to tackle child poverty in areas of deprivation.

Ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions engage regularly with their Ministerial counterparts in other Departments, taking a collective approach to the policies and interventions that can make a difference.

The Government is committed to reducing child poverty and supporting low-income families. We will spend over £245bn through the welfare system in 2022/23 including £111bn on people of working age.

In 2023/24, subject to parliamentary approval, we are uprating all benefit rates and State Pensions by 10.1%, in order to increase the number of households who can benefit from these uprating decisions the benefit cap levels are also increasing by the same amount.

With 1.16 million job vacancies across the UK, our focus remains firmly on supporting parents to move into, and progress in work, an approach which is based on clear evidence about the importance of employment - particularly where it is full-time - in substantially reducing the risks of child poverty and in improving long-term outcomes for families and children.

To help people into work, including parents, our Plan for Jobs is providing broad ranging support for all Jobseekers with our Sector Based Work Academy Programmes (SWAP), Job Entry Targeted Support and Restart scheme. We are also extending the support Jobcentres provide to people in work and on low incomes. Through a staged roll-out, which started in April 2022, around 2.1 million low-paid benefit claimants will be eligible for support to progress into higher-paid work.

The government is also increasing the National Living Wage by 9.7% to £10.42 an hour from April 2023, representing an increase of over £1,600 to the annual earnings of a full-time worker on the National living wage, benefitting over 2 million low paid workers.