Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of the report entitled Paying the Price of Child Poverty, published by Action for Children on 19 March 2025.

This Government values the insights provided by Action for Children and their recommendations have been noted.

The Child Poverty Taskforce is continuing its urgent work and is exploring all available levers, including considering social security reforms, to drive forward short and long-term actions across government to reduce child poverty. The Strategy will look at four key themes of increasing incomes, reducing essential costs, increasing financial resilience; and better local support especially in the early years. This will build on the reform plans underway across government and work underway in Devolved Governments.

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.

The vital work of the Taskforce comes alongside our commitments to triple investment in breakfast clubs to over £30 million, introduce a Fair Repayment Rate for deductions from Universal Credit, improve the adequacy of the standard allowance with the first sustained above inflation rise in the basic rate of Universal Credit since it was introduced and increase the National Living Wage to £12.21 an hour to boost the pay of three million workers.