Committees hold joint session to investigate policies to reduce child poverty
The Education and Work and Pensions committees will hold a joint evidence session to investigate how governments, past and present, have tried to tackle child poverty.
Meeting details
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The session, with witnesses including former cabinet minister Lord Blunkett and former Children’s Commissioner Baroness Longfield, comes ahead of the Government’s Child Poverty Taskforce publishing its strategy – due in spring 2025.
The Taskforce, announced in July 2024, was instructed to produce a strategy to reduce child poverty across the UK. It came amid criticism of the Government for not making changes to the ‘two-child limit’, where Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit payments are limited to a maximum of two children in most families.
Announcing details of the Taskforce’s work, the Government said in October that there had been an increase of 700,000 children in poverty since 2010. The Department for Work and Pensions has recently revealed that, in the year to April 2024, the number of UK children in poverty was at its highest level since comparative records began in 2002.
The first panel of witnesses – which also includes Naomi Eisenstadt, former director of Sure Start and the Social Exclusion taskforce – will be asked to assess the current levels of child poverty in the UK and how they think attitudes and discourse on child poverty have changed in recent years. They are also likely to be asked about government interventions to reduce poverty through social security policy, the National Minimum Wage, as well as measures to support children in education such as Pupil Premium. There may also be questions about the use of Sure Start centres, and the previous government’s rollout of Family Hubs.
A second panel of witnesses, including experts from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation among others, is also likely to be questioned on the Government’s proposed changes to health and disability benefits, and policies designed to help adults into work. There may also be questions about the relationship between poverty and children’s mental and physical health, and policies to improve attendance and attainment in school.