Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the child poverty taskforce on levels of child poverty in Fylde constituency.

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, including those in Fylde constituency. The Child Poverty Taskforce is progressing work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy in autumn that will deliver fully funded measures to tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty.

The Strategy will look at levers across 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.

As a significant downpayment ahead of strategy publication, we have already taken substantive action across major drivers of child poverty through the Spending Review 2025. This includes an expansion of Free School Meals that will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of the parliament, establishing a long-term Crisis and Resilience Fund supported by £1bn a year (including Barnett impact), investing in local family support services, and extending the £3 bus fare cap.

These commitments come on top of the existing action we have taken which includes expanding free breakfast clubs, capping the number of branded school uniform items children are expected to wear, increasing the national minimum wage for those on the lowest incomes and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a Fair Repayment Rate on Universal Credit deductions.