Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to help reduce the number of children in poverty in (a) Newcastle-under-Lyme constituency and (b) Staffordshire.

Tackling child poverty is at the heart of the Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and improve the life chances of every child.

Our Child Poverty Strategy sets out the steps we are taking to reduce child poverty in the short term, as well as putting in place the building blocks we need to change the course we are on and create long-term change. This includes the removal of the two child limit in Universal Credit, which will lift 450,000 children out of poverty. This could benefit around 1,770 children in the Newcastle-under-Lyme constituency and 16,470 children in Staffordshire living in households affected by this policy. Alongside other measures, including extending Free School Meals to all children in households in receipt of Universal Credit, the strategy will reduce child poverty by 550,000 in the final year of this Parliament, the largest reduction over a Parliament since comparable records began.

This comes alongside tripling our investment in breakfast clubs to over £30 million, capping branded school uniform costs, introducing Best Start Family Hubs in every local authority, providing £600 million over three years for the Holiday Activities and Food programme and extending free childcare.