Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if her Department will develop a longer term child poverty strategy.

The Child Poverty Taskforce is progressing urgent work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy, and we are exploring all available levers to drive forward short and long-term actions across government to reduce child poverty.

Our focus is on bringing about an enduring reduction in child poverty in this parliament, thereby reversing the trend that is seeing forecasts of child poverty continuing to increase. More details, including on the time horizon, will be set out in the strategy publication.

We are supporting claimants to identify what support may be available including through providing extensive information on Universal Credit on Gov.uk. Additionally, we show potential customers external benefit calculators where they can identify what they are likely to be eligible for. We also work closely with Citizens Advice who provide Help to Claim support for claimants to make a claim to Universal Credit, including marketing and publicising Help to Claim support.