Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the report by the North East Child Poverty Commission entitled Getting the building blocks wrong: Early childhood poverty in the North East, published in September 2022, if he will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the findings on the level of in-work child poverty in (a) the North East and (b) other regions; and if her Department will take steps to help tackle in-work child poverty in the North East.

Projecting the impacts of policies on child poverty is very difficult to do accurately – as poverty is dependent on changes for every type of income for the whole population. It is very difficult to isolate the specific impact of one policy and how many people might be moving slightly above or below a threshold that changes over time. Many policies will lead to changes in behaviour (e.g., being incentivised into increasing their earnings) which can also be very difficult to predict.

Statistics covering up until financial year ending 2021 on the number of children who are in low-income in the North East and other regions can be found in the annual publication: Children in low income families: local area statistics.

Childrenin low income families: local area statistics 2014 to 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Government is committed to reducing child poverty and supporting low-income families. In 2022/23 we will spend over £242 billion through the welfare system in Great Britain including £108 billion on people of working age.

To support parents to progress in work, we are extending the support jobcentres provide to people in work and on low incomes to help them to increase their earnings and move into better paid quality jobs. This new in-work progression offer started to roll-out from April 2022. Once fully rolled out, we estimate that around 2.1m low-paid benefit claimants will be eligible for support. This will be provided by work coaches and focus on removing barriers to progression such as support with childcare or addressing skills gaps. This new progression offer is in addition to a change the government made last month to the Administrative Earnings Threshold in Universal Credit. By raising the threshold on 26^th September 2022, approximately 114,000 more UC claimants on the lowest incomes will benefit from regular work coach support. The Chancellor announced that we would go further and raise the threshold again from January 2023 to expand this support to approximately 120,000 more people.