Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of Universal Credit's two-child limit on trends of the level of children living in poverty.

The Government firmly believes where possible it is in the best interests of children to be in working households. We have a range of employment support and advice available from our Work Coaches in Jobcentres to help people to be better off and become less reliant on benefits. Assessing the impacts of these policies would involve projecting forward every household’s income and individual circumstances which is not possible to do with confidence.

DWP is committed to supporting families and helping parents to progress. This requires a system that provides strong work incentives and key support for those who need it, but crucially also ensures a sense of fairness to the taxpayer as many working families do not see their incomes rise when they have more children.

Meanwhile, we can highlight that both rates and numbers of children in absolute poverty (60% of 2010/11 median income, both before and after housing costs) were lower in 2021/22 than in 2009/10. In 2021/22 there were 400,000 fewer children in absolute low income after housing costs than in 2009/10.