Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the annual budget was of the Child Poverty Unit in each of the last five years.

The Prime Minister is clear that tackling poverty and disadvantage, and delivering real social reform, is a priority for this Government

In each of the last five years the Child Poverty Unit was jointly sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education and HM Treasury. Staff from DWP and DfE were deployed to the unit. It is not possible to provide accurate total annual budget figures for the Child Poverty Unit because we cannot disaggregate the respective amounts from larger DWP and DfE budgets within which they are included.