Education Committee
Work and Pensions Committee
Oral evidence: Realising potential: Delivering the Child Poverty Strategy, HC 75
Tuesday 14 July 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 14 July 2026.
Education Committee members present: Helen Hayes (Chair); Jess Asato; Sureena Brackenridge; Jodie Gosling; Darren Paffey; Rebecca Paul; Manuela Perteghella; Mark Sewards; Caroline Voaden.
Work and Pensions Committee members present: Debbie Abrahams (Chair); Lee Barron; Damien Egan; John Milne; Liz Twist.
Questions 147-196
Witnesses
I: Olivia Bailey MP, Minister for Early Education, Department for Education, Rt Hon Dame Diana Johnson DBE MP, Minister for Employment, Department for Work and Pensions, James Wolfe, Director, Universal Credit, Families and Poverty, Lead Director for the Child Poverty Strategy, Department for Work and Pensions, and Elaine Squires, Deputy Director for Income, Family and Disadvantage Analysis Lead Analyst for the Child Poverty Strategy, Department for Work and Pensions.
Witnesses: Olivia Bailey, Dame Diana Johnson, James Wolfe and Elaine Squires.
[Helen Hayes took the Chair]
Chair: Welcome to this oral evidence session, which is a joint session of the Education Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee. This is the final evidence session in the joint inquiry by the two Committees to scrutinise the Government’s child poverty strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Ministers from the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions, together with officials from the Department for Work and Pensions, to answer questions. Ministers, may I ask you to introduce yourselves, and perhaps the officials can do so after that?
Olivia Bailey: Hello. I am really pleased to be here today; it is nice to see you all. I am Liv Bailey, the Minister for Early Education in the Department for Education, and I co-chair the interministerial group on child poverty with Diana.
Dame Diana Johnson: I am Diana Johnson, the Minister for Employment in the Department for Work and Pensions. I co-chair the interministerial group with Liv.
James Wolfe: I am James Wolfe, the director for poverty and universal credit policy in the DWP. Previously, I was a director in the child poverty unit in the Cabinet Office.
Elaine Squires: Hello, I am Elaine Squires. I am the deputy director for analysis on income poverty and families at the DWP and I led on the analysis for the child poverty strategy.
Q147 Chair: I will begin the questioning. The child poverty strategy aims to lift 550,000 children out of relative poverty by 2030. Do you think that is ambitious enough? Why is that particular figure the limit of the Government’s ambition for tackling child poverty?
Dame Diana Johnson: You will know that in the Labour manifesto that we were elected on in 2024, we had a clear commitment to tackling child poverty, and within a few weeks of coming into government, the Prime Minister set up the child poverty taskforce. You have rightly highlighted one of the headline figures, which has been discussed a lot, but it is fair to say that the child poverty strategy is a 10-year strategy. We recognise that 4 million children are currently in poverty in this country; about 1.9 million are in deep poverty. There is a very big job to do in tackling child poverty. We need to do some things straightaway, but we also need a much longer run at dealing with some of the drivers of child poverty.
What we found from the taskforce, which produced the strategy last December, alongside the monitoring and evaluation documents and the evidence pack, was that the quickest way of moving 550,000 children out of poverty was to remove the two-child limit brought in by previous Governments. We think that that will lift about 450,000 children out of poverty by the end of this Parliament. If you combine that with some of the other measures around free breakfast clubs and the entitlement to free school meals for all families on universal credit, which will come into operation in September this year, we get to 550,000.
The key thing about that number is that it is the largest number of children ever lifted out of poverty in a Parliament. So that is very ambitious, but it is not the full extent of what we want to do. That is why the strategy is a 10-year strategy. It is not just about the DWP or education; it is about a cross-Government approach. You will know that, alongside our strategy, we have the homelessness strategy, because housing plays an enormous part in child poverty and families living in poverty. You will also know that we have done lots around employment to encourage parents into work.
So although I accept that the 550,000 is the start, it is certainly not the end. I would certainly say that it is ambitious, and we should be proud of what we will deliver in this Parliament.
Chair: Minister Bailey, do you want to come in as well?
Olivia Bailey: No, it’s okay. We will take it in turns on different topics.
Q148 Chair: Within the 550,000, but also within the wider ambition you have talked about, how are you working to ensure that you do not simply lift children who are just below the poverty line just above it, but tackle the deepest poverty affecting children and really shift the dial in a way that makes a difference to quality of life and outcomes for children, as well as to what happens on the spreadsheet?
Dame Diana Johnson: The taskforce looked at how it could do that and how it could make sure we did not just deal with the children it might be easiest to move just over the line, but drilled down to those most disadvantaged children. We have two headline measures. One is relative low income after housing costs, which is the universally accepted standard way of measuring poverty. The second headline measure is around deep material poverty, and we did work with the LSE around what factors should be in that headline metric—things like children having access to good, nutritious food, such as fruit and vegetables, and to warm clothing or clothing that fits, and having a clean, damp-free home.
Those are some of the measures within that deep material poverty that we will be looking at, and that will allow us to have a much richer sense of what is going on and to focus on the most disadvantaged. Those are our two headline measures, but we also have things like households below average income and the family resources survey, which also give richer context around what is happening with families—savings, debts, use of food banks. So we have a range of material that will help us understand what is happening and whether policy decisions across Government are impacting on children in the deepest poverty.
We also have some contextual indicators, and Elaine might be able to help us with those and why we brought them forward. We set out our baseline assessment just last week, and the contextual indicators that we are going to use as well.
Elaine Squires: In the report last week, we set out eight contextual indicators to help us understand the underlying trends and what is going on with some of the drivers of poverty. Quite a few of them focus on the bottom two quintiles, and for those families we look at things like net household income before housing costs, employment rate and earnings. Others look at essential items. They are to complement the two headline metrics and help us really understand what is driving change in either direction.
Q149 Manuela Perteghella: Looking at the Government’s child poverty reduction estimates, projections suggest that progress on child poverty will stall in around 2029 and then increase by just 0.2 percentage points between 2030 and 2031. Why do you expect progress to stall?
Elaine Squires: The projections are based on our policy simulation model. We can project out only as far as the OBR scorecard, which is why it goes out just that far. We use the OBR assumptions, which change every six months, so we update those projections every six months. There is a degree of uncertainty around those figures, and they do change at each fiscal event, because they take into account things like wage growth, inflation and economic assumptions. When we publish them, we explain the uncertainty within them, and the further out you go, the more uncertainty there is, so we update them. The ones we have published have just been updated following the March fiscal event, and they will be updated again following the autumn statement.
Olivia Bailey: As Diana said, this is the largest single reduction in child poverty in any Parliament, and we have a 10-year strategy because that is just the start of our ambitions. The infrastructure we have created will ensure that we achieve that. We have the interministerial group that is driving progress, and we have annual reporting on discussions of our contextual metrics and the headline metrics. Across Government—in every policy, in every Department—we are thinking about how we can continue to drive down child poverty. Elaine is absolutely right about the limits of what we can project forward, but that should not be read to mean that we are going to stop making progress beyond that point.
Q150 Jess Asato: You have taken on responsibility for the child poverty strategy from the Secretaries of State. How will you ensure that this work remains a priority across Government? Do you think you have sufficient levers to deliver the strategy?
Olivia Bailey: Diana and I are thrilled to have this responsibility—it is a huge honour—but I do not think it should be read as a lack of enthusiasm from the Secretaries of State, who have absolutely been leading the way and are extremely engaged in the work we are doing. Let me talk through some of the ways we are going to drive that cross-Government action.
I briefly mentioned the interministerial group; we have met several times now, and once officially—the Prime Minister has established the group. It has 13 Government Departments—I think we are even in this room—coming together to talk about our accountability on the overall metrics, looking at the contextual indicators and, of course, looking at individual policies across Government Departments. It is going to be a really effective forum. It is already proving its worth, and we have had some great conversations. Colleagues have been really excited to come and present about how their policies and Departments are going to drive down child poverty. The group is going to ensure really strong cross-Government working.
In addition, we have the new team in the Department for Work and Pensions leading on child poverty, which is already doing a brilliant job. It is not just servicing the work of the interministerial group, but going out to other Government Departments and making stuff happen. For example, it is setting up meetings between Citizens Advice and Ministers in DESNZ to talk about the impact of child poverty, and driving cross-governmental activity.
Thirdly, we have set out a range of really clear accountability metrics, because we want to be held to account as a Government on our progress. We have the clear metrics. We have published our baseline report with our intentions around evaluation and reporting. We are setting up a new longitudinal qualitative study with parents to assess, year on year over a fixed, 10-year period, what our strategy is achieving. And we are publishing our progress every summer.
So I am really excited by the ambition and by the infrastructure we have created to ensure that it becomes the future we know it can be.
Dame Diana Johnson: One advantage of the taskforce was the co-production with the voluntary and community sector, charities and key stakeholders. Liv and I are really keen that we keep that relationship going and have that challenge from the sector, so that we are held to account by it as well; that is very important. At the last interministerial group, we had a section at the beginning where we invited key stakeholders to talk to us about how they thought the implementation of the strategy was progressing, and that is very important as well.
Q151 Jess Asato: Clearly, though, as you said, the child poverty unit has been moved out of the Cabinet Office to the DWP. Most cross-Government initiatives have been more successful when they have been situated in the Cabinet Office or in No. 10. Are you not worried that that is diluting your ability to get this cross-governmental work through?
Olivia Bailey: No, in short, because I have seen the huge commitment and energy with which the team in DWP have been approaching this issue. Diana and I have seen the huge energy that sits behind the interministerial group. That group was established by the Prime Minister. As I have outlined—I don’t want to repeat myself—we have really ambitious numbers of children that we want to drive out of poverty, and really clear accountability measures. I am extremely confident that this team of people we have, who are brilliant, will be able to drive that work from DWP.
Q152 Jess Asato: Finally, could you outline the remit and objectives of the interministerial group? You mentioned that a number of Departments are represented on it. It would perhaps be useful for the Committees to know which those Departments are.
Olivia Bailey: Absolutely. There are 13 Government Departments; if I try to list all 13 now, it will go terribly wrong, but we will of course send the details to you following this meeting, for your information.
We set out in the baseline strategy we published last week the three levels on which we want to look at progress on the strategy. The first is the strategy level, the metrics, and looking as a group at how we are doing on both our relative low income metric and our deep material poverty metric. The interministerial group’s job is to make sure we are doing what we need to do on both of those.
The second is the driver level. That looks at the contextual metrics Elaine has spoken to already that are in the baseline report, and also at how that applies in places around the country. At the last meeting, we had a fantastic open session at the start. As Diana discussed, we had Helen Godwin from the west of England to talk about her brilliant child poverty strategy and how that is manifesting in a specific place. That is really important.
The third thing the interministerial group is looking at is the individual policy contribution to driving down child poverty. In the next meeting, for example, I will talk about how our Best Start family hubs policy agenda will support and help children who are living in poverty. Other Government Departments are doing the same thing. Of course, it is about not just celebrating the things that we are doing, but that important challenge, so in everything we are doing on policy development across Government there will be a team of people, and our job as co-chairs is to make sure we always think about what impact that has on children living in poverty.
Chair: I am going to go next to the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, Debbie Abrahams.
Q153 Debbie Abrahams: Good morning, Ministers, and thank you for joining us. I will start off by saying that I absolutely agree with you that the work you are doing and the start that has been made on reducing child poverty are certainly to be welcomed. But on the point about ambition, we need to recognise that this strategy, as it is defined, will achieve just over a 12% reduction in child poverty. What has happened to the ambition we had under the Child Poverty Act 2010 to eradicate child poverty in 10 years?
Dame Diana Johnson: You are absolutely right: that was one of the last pieces of legislation that the previous Labour Government brought forward. In fact, I was talking to Stephen Timms, the Minister who took that forward, and there were targets in that legislation, as you rightly say. Of course, we had a change of Government and the targets that were set out in the Act were removed. I did not say this in my opening remarks, but we saw 700,000 children added to the poverty statistics from 2010 onwards. Just to set that in context—
Q154 Debbie Abrahams: Totally, but if I may interject, Minister, that highlighted the importance of having an ambitious target. In country after country, including Canada and New Zealand, we have seen the importance of targets and the impact that that can make. To be fair, even in Scotland, there is the impact of having a much more clearly defined ambition around reducing child poverty, and we can see that in comparison with other national Governments. Can I push you on why you are deciding not to introduce targets?
Dame Diana Johnson: Perhaps I could say one thing about Scotland to start us off. You are absolutely right that Scotland does have targets, which, as I understand it, they have failed to meet in every year that they have had targets. I think it was just a week or so ago that they decided to review the whole area of targets around child poverty.
Setting that aside for one moment, the taskforce debated this at length. Liv and I were not on the taskforce, because it predates our becoming Ministers in our Departments, but I understand that there was a full discussion about this, and the view was reached that targets can play their part, but often—the Chair of the Education Committee started off by asking about this—they mean that you are so focused on moving some children over the line to meet your particular target that you do not start to address some of the deep-seated problems around why so many children in this country are in deep material poverty.
The idea that the strategy is setting out is that this is about delivery. We are going to be held to account by our two headline metrics. As you know, we have a statutory duty every year to produce figures on poverty; we have to do that anyway. We will be judged—people will be able to see what is happening with the drivers that we have in policy to get the numbers down—but the decision was that targets would not necessarily serve our strategy well because, as I described, they could be too inflexible.
Q155 Debbie Abrahams: We hear that point, but we have received dozens of representations, including from UNICEF, the Health Foundation, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Faculty of Public Health—the list goes on and on; it is massive—that targets would make that difference. Ambitious targets could, for example, result in a reduction in infant mortality. A 35% reduction in child poverty would decrease infant mortality by 300 cases by 2033, reduce the number of looked-after children by 4,700 and reduce emergency admissions by 33,000. That is about setting ambitious targets and the quantifiable impact that would have on different Government Departments. In addition to the list of Departments that you are going to provide, what specifically are they going to do, thinking about those achievable impacts that could result from ambitious targets being adopted?
Dame Diana Johnson: I am really pleased that we have so many organisations and bodies in this country that care about child poverty and want to support the Government in bringing about its reduction. The strategy has set out the approach that we are going to take. It is worth saying that, across the board, if you talk to any of the Ministers who come along to the interministerial group, there is real determination that we are going to turn around the lives of children. I just want to set that again in your minds.
I have been on quite a few interministerial groups in my time, and there is a lot of challenge on this group, between Ministers, to ensure that Departments are reflecting and thinking about what we have all signed up to in the child poverty strategy. We can go through some of the Departments and what they have set out. Liv will talk about education and health, in particular; there are clear commitments there. In her new role in MHCLG, Alison McGovern, who was the Minister in my role previously and cares passionately about that, is very focused on the issue of temporary accommodation—bed-and-breakfast accommodation—for families, which I am sure we would all agree is completely inappropriate. The commitment is that no newborn baby should be sent into B&B accommodation. I know that Alison is really passionately driving that and making sure it happens. I was looking recently at some statistics about the number of families that are going into temporary accommodation, which is really being driven down.
Housing—decent housing—is a really big issue. As I am sure you know, we have committed £39 billion to social and affordable housing over 10 years to provide the type of housing that we want families and children to live in, and we have the 1.5 million homes that we will build as well. That is just one example, around housing, that could make a tangible difference to the outcomes that you are discussing. I am sure Liv has many others to add.
Olivia Bailey: I totally understand the argument that you have heard from witnesses about targets, but our analysis is that our holistic picture of the lives of children in poverty, which we will get through our metrics and all the baseline measures, and the accountability measures that we have built around that, will achieve the same, if not better, outcomes for children living in poverty. To address some of the points that you highlight, on infant mortality, we have a commitment as a Government to have the healthiest children ever. On the reductions in—
Q156 Debbie Abrahams: That is just a phrase, without saying what we are actually going to do about it.
Olivia Bailey: There are lots of ways that we are acting to do that. We are boosting Healthy Start vouchers and taking action on health inequalities across the country. On looked-after children and reducing the number of children going into care, we have a £2.4 billion Families First programme that is going to do that. I understand absolutely the argument that you are making, but we think targets would potentially lead to unintended consequences, and we think we can have more ambition and greater outcomes for children by doing it in the way that we have chosen to do it.
Q157 Debbie Abrahams: Good targets would not do that. There is a difference between having good targets and having targets that, as you say, have bad, unintended consequences. You would factor that into how you set your targets.
Dame Diana Johnson: I wonder if James wants to come in at this point.
James Wolfe: We did think quite deeply about this. The relative poverty indicator is an international standard, so it is really important that we hold ourselves to account against that, but there is so much going on that it just does not capture, and temporary accommodation is a really good example. Getting children out of temporary accommodation will have a huge impact on their lives, but it will not show up in that relative poverty figure. If you look at the two-child limit, we have said that the change will lift 450,000 children over that line, but there are actually 1.7 million children who benefit from it.
We had a really good think about what a sensible structure would look like. You get to the point where you would have to have so many targets about so many different areas, and we felt that publishing the baseline report, setting out a clear set of indicators and being really transparent about the data was the best way to be transparent and held to account for the strategy.
Q158 John Milne: Good morning. You quite rightly praised the Child Poverty Act 2010 for its very high ambition and, as you said, the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 effectively undid that. I would argue very strongly that the removal of those targets in 2016 had a direct impact on performance against child poverty. Do you agree?
Dame Diana Johnson: Perhaps it played a part, but I am sure those of us who were in Parliament from 2010 onwards remember the dreadful years of austerity, which I think actually played a much bigger part in 700,000 children being added to the number of children living in poverty. Over the past number of years, various things have happened to our country that have resulted in even more children being added to that figure, but I do think the years of austerity played a very large part.
Q159 John Milne: Clearly, lots of policies across the whole period had a big impact, and the situation got worse across the whole period, but I would say that one of the clear motives for the 2016 Act was to remove that obligation, because the Government knew they were going to fail it, and that had it remained, it would have spurred the Government to try harder on the issue. It seems to contradict what you are saying about how targets in this area would not have consequences.
Dame Diana Johnson: Obviously, previous Governments took decisions about their policies, and I can’t answer for what was in the minds of Conservative or Liberal Democrat politicians in those years from 2010 onwards. All I can say is that this Labour Government is committed to doing something about child poverty. Our economic inheritance has not been good, and we have had to take that into account, but we should be proud that what we are doing will lift 550,000 children out of poverty by the end of this Parliament. We have an ambitious 10-year strategy alongside that. We are being as open and transparent as we can be to make sure that we deliver on what we have said we will do.
Olivia Bailey: It is also possible to argue, counter to what you have said, that despite the presence of targets, if you do not have the will to act, you can still see many more children falling into poverty. There were targets present for a period of time and children fell into poverty as a consequence of decisions that the Government were taking. What we are trying to avoid is saying warm words on child poverty that do not result in children getting out of poverty. That is why we have created such a comprehensive infrastructure to ensure accountability and drive forward progress.
Q160 John Milne: I would strongly disagree that removing a target helps a neglected area. Targets are used across Government in every Department. We love targets—they are everywhere—so I am struggling to see why we should single out this area. I agree that there can be negative aspects to targets; I would argue that hospital waiting lists are a good example of some negative consequences, because when we get one list down, another one goes up. I agree that there can be negative consequences, but it is up to Ministers to ensure that that does not happen. I do not understand why we love targets everywhere else, but not here.
Dame Diana Johnson: The taskforce met for 15 or 16 months, looked at all the evidence and weighed up the best way to make sure that we had a strategy that was going to deliver. James has set out some of the discussions that were had and how we will capture what we do that will have the most effect on children.
Using a very narrow target, if that is what is being suggested, would not deal with the breadth of the problem that we have in this country in terms of tackling child poverty. As James has said, it would not highlight the issues around housing. I am particularly concerned about employment, as the Employment Minister, and I am not sure how it would capture that effectively and how we are putting in the support that parents need to get into work, to have good work and to progress in work. I am not sure how it would capture those parents who have health conditions or a disability. There are all sorts of things here that I think the richness of our strategy will be able to address.
But with the two headline metrics, we will be held to account on the issue of relative poverty and deep material poverty, and we will be publishing the poverty statistics every year, as we are obliged to do. I do not think there is any lack of accountability for what we are doing, and for making sure that we achieve what we have set out to do, which is to reduce child poverty.
Q161 Sureena Brackenridge: The Government has referred to the child poverty strategy as being a “decade long” strategy, but what does that actually mean in practice? Will the child poverty strategy have the scope to react and respond to future challenges? Will it be possible to update it with new and updated policies, rather than just an annual reporting on progress?
Olivia Bailey: That is a really important question. Absolutely: the publication of the strategy is deliberately the start of a process, not the conclusion. With the baseline report, we have committed to continuing to demonstrate, through the interministerial group, how we are driving progress towards those headline metrics and how Government policy as a whole must change to do that.
Importantly, we are also talking as a committee and through the process about what else we are going to be doing. Getting 550,000 children out of poverty is not the limit of our ambition; it is the foundation—it is the baseline of our ambition. There are so many other areas—I will mention the early education and childcare review, for example—where we are actively engaged in new policy creation as a Government that could have a really positive impact on child poverty. I am very confident that through the interministerial group, the regular reporting and the team that we have in the DWP, we will continue to be able to iterate, improve and build on this strategy, and that we will talk about and publish that, and drive forward to even greater ambition over the 10-year period.
Q162 Damien Egan: Staying on the theme of implementation, grassroots implementation and community groups are going to be so important. We have heard from some of those groups that there is uncertainty about how they can deliver local services. Do you have plans to publish anything like a delivery framework or some detailed guidance to support local delivery? You mentioned the example of the West of England Metro Mayor, but I would be interested to know how engagement with metro mayors and local authorities has been and how they will be engaged through this as well.
Olivia Bailey: That is a really important question; thank you, Damien. First of all, we have been so thrilled to be able to work so collaboratively with grassroots organisations, charities and, most importantly of all, people with lived experience of poverty. In the creation of this strategy and in its continued life, we will continue to do that. At the start of every interministerial group, we have a commitment to have open sessions where we will work with those organisations, whether they are mayors, local charities or national charities—whatever they may be. We have our new longitudinal qualitative study of parents living in poverty, or on either side of the relative poverty baseline, which will help us get that lived-experience voice in. We continue to be really collaborative in the delivery of this.
On the delivery of local services and in local places, that is a critical part of the delivery of the strategy. We are really pleased that in the outcomes framework, child poverty is something for local government to look at. We have lots of local authorities that have child poverty strategies in place, and we continue to work with them to achieve those. There are great examples of child poverty strategies, such as Helen in the west of England. As a Government team, we are committed to supporting that in whatever way we can, continuing to amplify the successes and supporting the delivery of local services.
Dame Diana Johnson: On the devolved nations, we as Ministers have been working with our counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, wanting to understand and hear about what they are doing, respecting, obviously, the devolution settlement. They know best what to do for their communities and local populations. We may be about to see an extension of devolution around the country. We will have a new Prime Minister who is very focused on that, and I know that the Greater Manchester model has been very much about doing things as much as you can locally. I think the role of the mayors may become even more important. Obviously, Helen down in the south-west is doing brilliant work, and Kim McGuinness up in the north-east is also doing excellent work. There are some really good examples, and the mayors and combined authorities share best practice, what fits with their areas and what could be used in other places. This is quite an exciting agenda on what you can do at the local and regional level and on really building on some of that good practice.
James Wolfe: We were really keen that place was at the heart of the strategy from the very beginning, so we had mayors along to the very first meeting of the taskforce, right at the very start. I will also mention the better futures fund, because we are working really closely with DCMS on what that money might do in social outcome partnerships. I know that you are interested in how community organisations are involved, so that is one area where we are taking that forward. Certainly, the unit in DWP has very regular contact with local government at all levels—recently, for example, on food poverty and on how we can support local food organisations to deliver sustainably for their communities. It is a really core part of how we are taking things forward.
Q163 Debbie Abrahams: Could you expand in a little more detail on what you said about annual reporting, particularly thinking about the Social Mobility Commission and an independent audit by some independent organisation?
Dame Diana Johnson: Absolutely. We welcome any scrutiny and we want to be held accountable. Elaine might want to go into what exactly is going to be published, so that you are clear on that. I am also sure that the Children’s Commissioners in all the nations will want to be very much looking at how this strategy is implemented and whether it is delivering. Obviously, we very much welcome the fact that two Select Committees are looking at the strategy. In the future, you may wish to come back and look again at what happens with the implementation, perhaps annually or every other year. Elaine, do you want to set out what is going to be produced?
Elaine Squires: The baseline report set out how we are going to monitor it, with the metrics and the indicators, but also how we are going to evaluate the strategy and the individual policies—the research that we have already started to commission, what we will be doing around place and our early thinking on that, and also a call to local organisations to help us and challenge us on that, in terms of how we can evaluate what is going on in individual places. We have also set out what we are going to do around a process evaluation and talking to different delivery partners. That is all set out there.
Equally, we work with organisations like the JRF—Peter Matejic is on our academic expert advisory group—the Resolution Foundation and so on. They will produce their assessment; they produce the same kinds of figures as us in terms of projections and things like that. There are lots of organisations who are doing that external scrutiny, and we look at that.
The expert advisory group has a whole range of academics and people from think-tanks who are experts in this area who provide scrutiny and challenge to us around the baseline report. When we were developing the contextual indicators, we worked with them and got their views on what we were doing. They also share their research and views with us, so we have that challenge to the work we are doing.
Q164 Liz Twist: The baseline report says that lived experience will be a central thread in the evaluation activity for the strategy. I have two questions. First, how will you gather the information to show the differential impact of the measures we are taking in the strategy and how we can adjust it so that people get a good shot? Secondly, how will you use people’s lived experience to look at how the strategy is going?
Olivia Bailey: This is a really critical question. We were really determined that people with lived experience of poverty should be at the heart of the creation of the strategy. The fact that we were able to have a foreword to the report written by members of the Changing Realities group was a real sign of the level of trust and engagement that we built over the course of developing that strategy.
Of course, it is also very important to talk to children with experience of poverty. Diana and I had a great visit to a school in Camden when we published our child-friendly version of the strategy, and we had great conversations with children about the impact of poverty. Approximately eight children in every class live in poverty. We have worked with the Children’s Commissioner, Save the Children and other organisations to ensure that children’s voices are really centred in this strategy. We will continue to do that; we are committed to continuing that approach right the way through the life of this strategy.
I have already mentioned several times the new longitudinal qualitative survey that we will be doing, which will ensure that we have lived experience at the forefront of how we measure what is going on. We will continue in whatever way we can to bring in the voices of people with experience of poverty as we drive forward and make sure that we are hearing those voices in our interministerial group as well. Of course, that also means recognising the differential impact of poverty on different groups. That is very clearly reflected in both the strategy and the baseline report, and it is also reflected in Government policy in lots of different ways, to try to tackle that differential impact where we find it.
Q165 Liz Twist: Just to be clear, there is information being gathered that can be disaggregated by groups with specific needs or issues, and that can be used to inform the strategy. Is that right?
Olivia Bailey: Yes. Perhaps Elaine can come in on this, but there is both qualitative and quantitative information, which will enable us to have a holistic look at the different impacts of poverty on different groups. Elaine, perhaps you could explain the surveys we have and how we can disaggregate those.
Elaine Squires: The new longitudinal survey that the Minister has mentioned is qualitative, so it is going to follow 350 families, but we will be sampling to ensure we have families who are in rural areas, for example, because we know that they have specific issues.
We will sample to ensure that we are picking up the range of experiences. We will also continue to engage with Changing Realities, which is an existing panel of 200 parents across the UK. We have done a lot of work with them already. They really do represent lots of different circumstances of families. When we were developing the strategy, we commissioned some research specifically with children and families from what we call lesser-heard groups—people who are sometimes not picked up in surveys, for different reasons—to make sure that we are hearing those views and bringing in that lived experience. We will continue to do that.
Q166 Liz Twist: Finally, if the feedback and the figures—whether that is from selected groups or the people in the Changing Realities group you talked about—show that the measures in the strategy are not working properly for one group or another, or indeed for anyone, will you be open to changing course and implementing additional policies?
Olivia Bailey: Yes, I think is the answer to that question, and that is one of the things that the interministerial group is there to ensure. We have that constructive challenge, and we have that eye on the impact of poverty, not just in general, but on specific groups. I am confident that that process will be really important to make sure that if something is not working or is being counterproductive, we will be able to challenge it and change course.
Q167 Caroline Voaden: The strategy recognises that some families are at a higher risk of poverty than others. The Scottish Government have identified six priority family groups in their own work on child poverty. Could you tell us which particular groups at high risk of poverty are going to be included systematically in your monitoring, evaluation and reporting? If you are not specifying particular groups, will you tell us why you chose not to do so?
Olivia Bailey: Perhaps Elaine can come in on this in a moment. The Scottish Government have chosen to have priority groups; we have chosen to take a different approach. You will see in the strategy itself, in the baseline report, the extent to which discussion of this is embedded in everything that we are doing. We know where there are higher impacts of poverty—for example, larger families, where there is a higher incidence of poverty, and we talk about the importance of housing. There is a range of different ways in which we talk about people with experience of poverty. Elaine, do you want to add anything?
Dame Diana Johnson: May I come in first? One thing that I am very conscious about is single parents. We know that single-parent households are more likely to be in poverty than those with two adults. I am very conscious, particularly in the employment space—we want people to be in work, because we know that good work is good for you—of childcare and of making sure that, in particular, single parents who are on universal credit have access to childcare and can afford to make work pay. That is one particular group that I am focused on, because I know they are more predominant within the poverty statistics, and we know that families from ethnic minority communities feature highly as well.
Elaine Squires: The two headline metrics both come from the family resources survey—that is where the poverty statistics come from. There are lots of breakdowns in there of family type—we look at lone parents and couple families—family size and housing status, whether renting or homeowner. All the things that the Scottish Government have focused on, we publish data on, in the evidence pack supporting the child poverty strategy; we have updated that, and it sits alongside the baseline report. We show those statistics, so that we will be able to see what is happening with those groups and the impact that things are having. All that data is there and we report on it, and it is published in March every year in HBAI.
Q168 Caroline Voaden: So you are confident that as the strategy moves forward, you will be able to look at the intersectionality of poverty and work out which groups are improving, which groups are stalling and where the strategy might need to be tweaked to address that.
Elaine Squires: Definitely, in the monitoring, we will be looking at what is going on in the underlying statistics. We will be looking at those contextual indicators, which are really to help us understand what is happening each year for different family groups. We will be able to see where, perhaps, some are improving and some are not and then look back at the strategy. That is really what that monitoring framework is for.
Q169 Caroline Voaden: Do those statistics include a record of children who are bereaved of a parent? I am doing a lot of work about bereavement benefits, which were slashed by the Conservatives, and families falling into poverty when they lose a parent. Are they being tracked?
Elaine Squires: In terms of the adults in households, we collect their status, so we know if they are in couples or lone parents and we would know if someone said they were widowed, for example. We also collect lots of information about benefits, so if an adult in a household was receiving bereavement support, we would know that. Lots of information is collected. If somebody said they were widowed, for example, it would be difficult to know whether that was the parent of all the children in the household, because of the nature of family formation, but we do collect information about household type and benefit receipt.
James Wolfe: Can I give a practical example? If you look at the information we published last week in the baseline report, it is quite interesting if you look at families with a disabled person in the household, because the headline relative poverty metric is quite similar to that for all families, but the deep material poverty metric is much higher. That is the level of insight that we want to bring to the strategy. We want to make sure that we capture the different circumstances and needs of different families. Hopefully, if we are able to improve services and outcomes for families with a disabled member, that will show up in the deep material poverty metric over time, in a way it would not have done if we were looking only at the headline national poverty target.
Q170 Manuela Perteghella: We have heard that the strategy does not offer any concrete action to reduce poverty for children with no recourse to public funds, who often live in very deep poverty, so what steps are the Government taking to improve support for this group of children?
Olivia Bailey: Thank you—that is a really important question. The Government do a range of things to support children with no recourse to public funds, including access to the pupil premium, free school meals and some of the early years childcare entitlements—the early years two-year-old and the three and four-year-old universal entitlement. It was really important in the strategy that we spoke to parents of children with no recourse to public funds; that was very much part of the strategy. Also, we have committed to developing further our understanding in this area. We have added questions to the family resources survey, to understand in greater detail the experience of children with no recourse to public funds. I will add that of course, where there are child welfare concerns or concerns about a child, it is possible for that condition to be lifted if that is necessary.
Q171 Manuela Perteghella: You talk about a whole-Government approach to reducing child poverty and you mentioned the interministerial group. Is the Home Office represented in that group?
Olivia Bailey: Yes.
Q172 Manuela Perteghella: We have heard that “the Home Office is consistently designing policy that is driving up child poverty and destitution”. How do your Departments work with the Home Office to ensure that its policies are aligned, and not in conflict, with the child poverty strategy?
Olivia Bailey: That is a really important question and exactly the kind of conversation that the interministerial group has had and will have. With the Home Office policies that you are referring to, there is obviously a really important balance to be struck, which the Home Office is trying to strike, between trying to reduce the illegal small boat crossings and reducing incentives to try to make those terrible, dangerous crossings, and ensuring that we are supporting children and protecting families and ensuring that there is no destitution. That is a conversation that everybody in Government, the Home Office included, is very engaged with as those policies are developed.
Dame Diana Johnson: I know that the officials in the DWP and the Home Office are working very closely together. Clearly, the child poverty strategy is a whole-Government strategy.
Q173 Manuela Perteghella: Obviously, it is really important, because estimates showed that 1.7 million children living in poverty in 2023-24 had no recourse to public funds. Many of those children are born in Britain but have parents who are foreign-born. I am just a bit worried about how you are engaging with the Home Office, because, again, we have a misalignment of policies in relation to the goals of the child poverty strategy.
Olivia Bailey: Thank you for that—it is really important. My understanding is that where there is an impact on “no recourse to public funds”, it will come from the earned settlement proposals, which are still in consultation and in discussion. We will continue as an interministerial group to be engaged in those conversations.
Q174 Manuela Perteghella: I am glad to hear that the voices of these families were heard. How will you continue to engage with them?
Olivia Bailey: It is critical to what we are doing; it is really important to what we are doing. Again, there is the new longitudinal qualitative study; continued engagement with charities and organisations like the Children’s Commissioner, who can ensure that we are speaking directly to children; and working with Changing Realities and other groups. Perhaps James would like to say a bit more about the work of the team.
James Wolfe: As part of the development of the strategy, we did talk to parents with no recourse to public funds in many parts of the country. One of the things we heard very clearly was, “Can you make the existing system less confusing?” That is why there is a commitment in the strategy to provide clearer advice. Those voices were heard in the development of the strategy, and we will carry on talking to people with no recourse to public funds as we implement.
Olivia Bailey: Absolutely.
Q175 Chair: Can I press you slightly on that? I have heard the importance of working together and that you have engagement and recognise the issues affecting children living with no recourse to public funds. To be absolutely clear, when we are talking about deep material poverty, those are to a large extent the children that we are talking about: the children living in the absolute worst conditions in the country. What you have not said is anything about the progress that you are seeing from the Home Office. It is the experience of the Education Committee that the Home Office, for example with regard to the impact of its policies on universities and their financial viability, is something of a law unto itself.
Can you say a bit more about the progress that you are seeing from the Home Office in relation to the Government’s commitment to improve the situation for children living in the deepest material poverty, many of whom have no recourse to public funds? What, practically, are the changes that we expect to see for those families?
Dame Diana Johnson: I do not think we are in a position today to say what policies are going to finally come out of the Home Office in terms of, say, settlement, because that is a live policy issue. All we can reassure you of is that there is input from the interministerial group and input from officials, from the child poverty strategy and what that will mean for some of the proposals being discussed. I do not think we are in a position to say anything more than that, but just to reassure you, we are having those conversations and we understand the point you are making.
Chair: Thank you; I appreciate that.
Q176 Darren Paffey: Dame Diana, we have heard evidence that it will be difficult to substantially reduce child poverty through employment because a lot of the benefits of that work have already been banked. For example, two-thirds of lone parents are now in work. At the start of the new Labour Government that was 45%. Do you accept and acknowledge that and what is your plan? Specifically, how many children do you expect to be lifted out of poverty by the DWP’s employment support measures?
Dame Diana Johnson: It is clear that children in families where nobody is in work are four times more likely to be in poverty. We work on the basis that getting people into work is a good thing. It is good for children, for the family, for the taxpayer and for the British economy. There have obviously been increases in the number of single parents who have gone into employment over recent years, but there is still a lot more to do.
One group I am very concerned about is people with health conditions or disabilities. This Government are not prepared to say, “Well, you are signed off because you have a health condition or a disability,” and just write them off. We think there are lots of people who, given the right support and opportunity, would like to work. We are committed to employment support schemes such as Connect to Work and WorkWell, which are about getting alongside somebody and helping them to get back into work. That is part of our broader welfare reform package. Previous Governments have just left people with no hope, which is absolutely wrong.
We are also doing more to support single parents. I mentioned childcare, which is often the barrier for people getting back into work or getting into work in the first place. You will know that in the Budget at the end of last year, we announced that we are extending the childcare offer to all children for families on universal credit, when it was limited to two. That means we are covering 85% of childcare costs. We have also changed the flexible support scheme, which means parents going into work can get some up-front childcare costs. We have extended that to people who are returning after maternity, paternity or adoption leave.
We are putting in place a range of measures to help people who want to be back in the workplace and earning an income for their family. I cannot say today what the figures are. I can tell you that, overall, we are going to help 300,000 people by the end of the five-year Connect to Work programme, and many of those will be parents.
Q177 Darren Paffey: Do you believe there is still room for that two thirds figure to go up, so that more are supported back into work? Is that your aspiration, whether it is a target or not?
Dame Diana Johnson: I want every person who wants to work, who should be in work, to have that opportunity. As you will know, another big problem is that we have too many young people who are not in employment, education or training. The Government have a big offer in the youth guarantee. For those young people, again, we are not prepared to just sit by and say, “Well that’s fine; you’re signed off.” We are saying, “We are going to do everything we can to get alongside you and support you.”
We have the youth gateway, where we do intensive support with young people. We are incentivising employers to take a punt by giving them £3,000 to take a young person who has been on UC for the last six months. If we have not been successful after 18 months, we will say to a young person on universal credit that the Government will pay for a job for 25 hours a week on the minimum living wage to get them the experience of being in the workplace.
There is a lot to do. I am not sitting back and saying, “We’ve got two thirds of people into work; that’s fine.” We have an enormous amount of talent in this country. We need to get people into work and we need to support them.
Q178 Darren Paffey: Do you think there is scope to amend, for example, the work allowance in universal credit, which would allow more lone parents and second earners in families with children to keep more of their earnings, thus alleviating family poverty?
Dame Diana Johnson: We always keep benefits under review. You will know, for example, that we brought in the largest ever increase above inflation for the standard allowance of universal credit. We have changed the rules on repayments as well—we have reduced the repayments that can be taken from UC. We are always looking at ways to make work pay and to encourage people into work, while having a benefit system that is fit for purpose.
Q179 Debbie Abrahams: On your point about disabled households, are households that have a disabled child, a disabled adult or both being deemed as families at risk? That was not one of the groups that you mentioned, Elaine. They will not necessarily be claiming social security support, but they may be in poverty. How are we going to make sure they are monitored? The employment support aspect is relevant here as well.
Elaine Squires: In the family resources survey, we collect information about whether there is a disabled adult or a disabled child in the household. We can look at whether there is, and we can also look at whether they are receiving benefits. All that information is in the poverty statistics.
Debbie Abrahams: Fantastic. Thank you.
Q180 Jodie Gosling: The benefits cap disproportionately impacts on households with children, single parent households and single parents with very young children under five. Did the Government consider amending the benefit cap in any way when developing the strategy?
Dame Diana Johnson: The Government have a statutory responsibility every, I think, five years to consider the benefit cap. I think that is coming up next in ’27. On the benefit cap, you will know that this Government take the view that we want to incentivise people to work. We want to say that we expect people to be in work.
The benefit cap has a number of exemptions. You can earn £881 before the benefit cap is applied. For certain families—say, families with a person with a disability—it does not apply anyway. There was consideration at the taskforce around what we should do on the benefit cap, but the decision was that we are keeping it because of the incentivisation that it provides. Also, it is going to be reviewed. I think it is the Secretary of State who decides at what point he should do that. Is that right, James? You were on the taskforce.
James Wolfe: Yes, that is right. Just to clarify, if you earn more than £881, you are exempt from the cap. We need to support families into work so they can get themselves out of poverty through that route, and the benefit cap is there to incentivise that.
Q181 Jodie Gosling: With the introduction of child payments in Wales and in Scotland, we could see children in England and Northern Ireland comparatively worse off—disadvantaged. How can we justify differing approaches to these sorts of payments in different parts of the UK?
Dame Diana Johnson: Obviously, the devolved nations can take decisions about how they want to tackle child poverty in their nations, and that is absolutely right. That is part of devolution: different solutions for different populations. We have taken a different approach, but that does not necessarily mean, as I think your question implied, that children will be worse off in England because we have not gone down the route that Wales are planning to do or that has been taken in Scotland.
We have a holistic approach to tackling child poverty. We decided not to follow Scotland or Wales, but that is devolution—that is what it is about. Scotland has taken a particular route. Scotland has also had targets, which it is now reviewing. We need always to be listening and to be mindful of what other nations are doing, but it does not need to be the case that everybody does the same thing.
Q182 Caroline Voaden: I would like to talk about housing, which you have referred to previously in your evidence. Many, many contributors to this inquiry—probably most of them—drew the link between the cost of housing and children living in poverty. Your strategy states that the Government will “continue to review the levels of support” provided to renters in the private rented sector. At what point will the Government intervene to increase the local housing allowance rate?
Dame Diana Johnson: This issue was also looked at as part of the taskforce review, and the decision was made, because of our financial inheritance when we came into government, that we did not want to increase it at that time. I cannot prejudge what might happen in the future, but I also talked earlier about the investment that this Government are putting into housing, particularly social and affordable housing, and the resources that are going into local authorities around temporary accommodation and homelessness. We have a homelessness strategy. A whole range of things are being done in the space around housing, but that is not the route that the Government wanted to go down at that point.
Q183 Caroline Voaden: I appreciate that you are doing things around social housing and temporary housing. However, there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country living in private rented accommodation. Where I live, a family of three will have to pay over £1,100 a month in rent, but the local housing allowance is just £840. It goes nowhere near covering the cost of social housing, let alone private rented. The rates were last relinked and frozen to the 30th percentile in October 2024. Just unfreezing and relinking the rates to the 30th percentile today would lift 75,000 children out of poverty by 2029-30. When are the Government going to take this step to uprate the local housing allowance so that it actually corresponds to the real-life rents that people are paying in the private rented sector, which in many places is the only available accommodation because there is no social housing?
Dame Diana Johnson: As I said, we keep all policies under review. We took a decision on what we were going to do around the local housing allowance. I did not mention—and I should have done—the Renters’ Rights Act, which this Government have introduced and which, again, offers protections to tenants in a way that they have not had before, particularly around no-fault evictions.
You are highlighting one area, and I have said that we keep things like that under review, but there is a whole range of other things that we are doing to protect and support tenants. I can write to you about the discussions that were had around this, but the decision was taken that we were not going to update that at this time. James, do you want to come in on this point?
Q184 Caroline Voaden: But the Renters’ Rights Act—that’s a distraction. That protects them from being evicted, but we know that there are children who do not even have a bed to sleep in, or children living in cramped accommodation, with families of six, eight or 10 living in two-room flats because they cannot afford anything bigger.
Dame Diana Johnson: Yes, and that is why we have committed £39 billion to building social and affordable housing. That is one of the reasons, because we want to make that available. James?
James Wolfe: All I would add is that we did make a substantial investment in social security at the last Budget by removing the two-child limit and uprating the standard allowance. I accept that the LHA position is what it is, but the family that you described, for example, with three children, would benefit from the removal of the two-child limit and the uprating of the standard allowance. So the decision was taken that that was the best and optimum way, at the last Budget, to put more money into the pockets of the families who needed it most.
Chair: I would just add that many colleagues, particularly in London but in other parts of the country as well, will see on a monthly basis how, on its own, that failure to move on the local housing allowance is simply forcing more and more families into temporary accommodation all the time. We have a broad recognition from the Government that children living in temporary accommodation is a very bad thing for those children and a bad thing for child poverty. That single measure remains of concern, I think, to many Members. I would just put that on the record for Ministers to consider and perhaps take back to the joint ministerial group from this joint Committee session.
Q185 Liz Twist: My first question is for Minister Bailey. We have heard a lot of evidence from parents about the difficulties they face in being able to afford childcare to help them to work. In the light of the Secretary of State’s expressed wish to expand the funded childcare hours to parents who are out of work, will that be included in the Department’s early years funding consultation?
Olivia Bailey: First of all, let me say that I am really proud of the huge expansion of childcare that we have overseen. We inherited a pledge with absolutely no plan, and we have delivered a record expansion of childcare. We have now managed, I think, to double Government spending on childcare. It is now £9.5 billion this year; it was half that in 2023-24. The Government are now funding 80% of the childcare that is delivered in this country. There are record numbers of places and record numbers of children in early education. That is fantastic, and it is saving working families £8,000 a year, which is really significant to household budgets.
As you will be aware, we also have the EL2 entitlement, which we are working hard to drive up take-up of. We have the universal entitlement and the universal credit schemes that Diana talked about earlier. There are lots of different ways that we are trying to encourage and support this. Increasing the early years premium is also a really important part of what we have done in the early years. We have seen a huge uptake in that, which creates more places and encourages more participation.
Across the board we are doing what we can to support children into childcare, but we are conscious that the system is not how anybody would design it if they started with a blank piece of paper. It has been developed in a piecemeal way, it is extremely complex for Ministers, let alone for parents, and it is right that we look at that.
We have established the early education and childcare review. It is slightly different to the funding consultation that you mentioned, which is a more technical look at how we distribute funding. The early education and childcare review established at the last Budget and under way now is asking a really important question: rather than piecemeal additions to the system, what is our end goal? Where do we want to end up?
Of course, that means looking at where there are gaps in access to childcare and asking the big questions about how the system should be designed. Instead of just adding things on bit by bit, it is right at this point in time—having by default created a new public service where we fund 80% of childcare in this country—to ask what the best possible version of that public service could look like. That is what the early education and childcare review is doing.
Q186 Liz Twist: In the meantime, is there a way for parents to be clear on what their options are and what funding streams they might come into?
Olivia Bailey: Yes, there is. Because we recognise how complex it is, we have created a new online way for parents to check their eligibility. We continue to be committed to supporting parents through our best start in life campaign, through the expansion of Best Start family hubs and through the family support we give to help them understand and access the entitlements that are available to them.
Q187 Liz Twist: Why are parents in education and training excluded from the universal credit childcare entitlement? We have heard issues about that.
Olivia Bailey: I think they are excluded from the universal childcare entitlement, which DFE oversees. I hear lots of representations on that and they are good arguments. As I have described, we have a system that has been created in a very piecemeal way and there are gaps. This is one of the questions that the early education and childcare review will look at in the round because it is right that we ask questions on whether we are getting this childcare to the right places and the right people.
Q188 Liz Twist: The Committee has heard evidence from people about the difficulties that can cause.
Olivia Bailey: Yes. I get lots of correspondence on this issue and I very much understand it. I assure the Committee that, in the round, all of these questions are being considered by the early education and childcare review.
Q189 John Milne: This is a question for Minister Bailey. Free school meals and breakfast clubs are very positive initiatives that I welcome. However, there are practical considerations. In my own Horsham constituency, I have spoken to many schools. They would really struggle to provide breakfast clubs. At the moment it is a pilot, but many tell me they would struggle to provide them for all kinds of practical, staffing or space reasons.
If you look at free school meals, the current situation is that they are underfunded. Pretty much every school in my area has to subsidise it. That situation was there before this Government, but it is still there. The breakfast clubs therefore increase the pressure, and they are having to be cross-subsidised from the rest of the school.
There is also the removal or phasing out of the sports premium. Outside organisations also provide breakfast clubs in some cases, so there is a cross-subsidy issue that may have unforeseen consequences, if you have not looked at that. My overall point is that the practical challenges of funding and staffing threaten to undermine the whole initiative. Is that going to be looked at? Would it not be better to concentrate on getting free school meals right?
Olivia Bailey: Thank you for starting with the recognition of the huge value that both of these schemes will bring. It will be a transformational impact. The free school meals expansion takes 100,000 children out of poverty, and free breakfast clubs do not just save parents time and money, but give children a brilliant soft start to the day. It helps with attendance. It helps children with special educational needs. There are so many benefits to that 30 minutes of childcare at the start of the school day that go above and beyond financial and time savings for families.
I will come on to your points—sorry, I like to talk about these policies because they are transformational. I take your arguments, but I do not agree with the conclusion that you have come to. Let me explain: with breakfast clubs, we have deliberately taken a test-and-learn approach to make sure that we are asking schools to do something that is possible.
After the first test-and-learn phase, we made some decisions, including increasing the funding. The average school gets an additional six and a half grand, based on the learnings from the first phase, for the start of the national roll-out. Breakfast clubs are funded, and they are funded well, and we are doing whatever we can as a Government to support schools in their implementation.
Of course, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act puts in law the provision that we want all primary schools to have a free breakfast club by the end of the Parliament. As we drive forward to that huge expansion of those free breakfast clubs, we are determined to give schools the help and support that they need. We have been doing that. There is more funding and there are resources and support. We are working very hard to achieve it.
On free school meals, again, there is £1 billion of extra money to pay for the expansion of free school meals. We continually look at the free school meals rate to ensure that it is going up with inflation and is manageable and affordable for schools. Again, it is new money that is enabling this to happen, which is really important. It is possible to do both.
I am very grateful to schools for all the hard work. With breakfast clubs, I appreciate that some schools may want to take a bit of time to think about how they are going to do that, and we want to support them to do that. I am clear that we are giving both the resource and the practical help that schools need to make those policies a success.
Q190 John Milne: Thank you for that answer, but I will write to you because I am telling you that there are direct examples of schools telling me that they cannot do it.
Olivia Bailey: I would be delighted to hear if there is anything more I can do to help in your constituency. You must let me know.
John Milne: Thank you.
Chair: We are running slightly short on time. I have four more Members who wish to ask questions, so if I can ask everybody to be succinct, both in your questions and your answers, that will help us to get through as quickly as we can.
Q191 Sureena Brackenridge: I really welcome the expansion of free school meals to all children from families on UC. But the Education Committee made a recommendation about introducing auto-enrolment. Surely with the expansion of free school meals linked to UC, is that not more straightforward?
Olivia Bailey: Thank you; that is a really important question. We are confident that we will see more uptake in free school meals because the threshold is now much simpler. It is much clearer for parents: if you are on universal credit, you are entitled. I am already seeing my children’s schools emailing around with this. It is going to be really exciting to see the huge uptake that we have on this.
We have made improvements as a Government to the eligibility checking process to make that easier. Of course, there are examples of local authorities that are taking activity in the regard that you are describing, and we are continuing to work with them and discuss that with them.
Q192 Sureena Brackenridge: Why not have auto-enrolment, which would cut out the need for local authorities and schools to reach out to parents?
Olivia Bailey: As I have said, we want everybody who is entitled to this provision to get it. The steps that we have taken are improving the eligibility checking scheme. Obviously, there are initiatives in local places, as you describe. We continue to talk to local authorities about those and work with them because we want all children to access this entitlement, and we are confident that they will.
Q193 Darren Paffey: I think we would all agree with the principles of work being a route out of poverty for adults, and of education being the foundations to a route out of poverty for children. However, we have seen evidence that the curriculum is still overly rigid and does not reflect the needs of children who want to take alternative paths to university, for example, because of their family situation. What are the Government doing to look at the role of the curriculum in engaging children who are in poverty, and supporting them to take advantage of all the opportunities there—such as proper further education and proper routes through—so that they can build the skills to get jobs in their local area and get out of poverty?
Olivia Bailey: I will try to keep my remarks brief; I could talk about this topic for a very long time. I will hand over to Diana to talk about the Milburn review in a second. It starts in the early years. We know that tackling educational inequalities is about supporting children in the earliest years, which is why we are rolling out Best Start family hubs and why I have talked about the early education and childcare review.
In schools, we are focusing on halving disadvantage. We are doing that in lots of ways, such as through great teaching. We have reformed the curriculum to make it broader, creating a wider enrichment curriculum and making schools more inclusive. Also, as we get up into secondary school, we are supporting children into apprenticeships to reverse the decline in apprenticeship starts, for example. That is a good moment to hand over to Diana, who can talk about the Milburn review and how we will support children who are not in education, training or employment.
Dame Diana Johnson: Alan Milburn is doing a review of why, as I referred to earlier, more than 1 million young people not in education, employment or training. He has already produced his first interim report and will produce his final report in the autumn. He is looking across the piece, including at what is going on with education in schools, how we are ending up with so many young people who are disaffected, we might say, from the normal academic route, and how we can engage fully with children and young people in education to provide them with the opportunities that they want to take up. That is coming in the autumn.
Although the review was set up by Pat McFadden, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, it will make recommendations across Government, including to DFE and other Government Departments. We are very aware of the point you are making, and we want to see what Alan comes up with.
Q194 Jodie Gosling: The education-related measures in the child poverty strategy focus heavily on early years and primary. Will the Government commit to strengthening some of the measures around older pupils, such as extending the pupil premium or investing in adult education?
Olivia Bailey: Absolutely. First, you are right to identify that focus on the early years, and it is important that we do that. If a child is not school-ready at four to five, they are three times more likely not to be in education, training or employment at 16. We can make so much progress in the early years, which is why we have taken decisions such as to hugely increase the early years pupil premium and so on.
As I just mentioned to Darren, we are committed to halving the disadvantage gap throughout the whole of schooling. One of the ways we will do that is by looking at how disadvantage funding is distributed; the Department will be coming out with a consultation on that. That is a big commitment, and the consultation will be important as part of that plan.
Q195 Jodie Gosling: Fantastic. We heard evidence about the importance of high-quality careers advice to raise children’s aspirations, support them into the good-quality jobs that we would all like to see them in and break that poverty cycle. Why is that not included in the strategy? What steps are the Department taking to improve careers advice?
Olivia Bailey: Diana may want to come in on this, but we have taken a range of measures to improve the quality of careers advice, as we know how important it is for children and young people to understand the breadth of options available to them. Of course, the DWP are also taking lots of measures to help in this regard.
Dame Diana Johnson: The National Careers Service, which is open to and can be used by anyone to get advice, is outsourced at the moment, but it is coming back into jobcentres and will be a jobs and careers service. That is part of our transformation of jobcentres to try to make them about wrapping-around and giving individuals the personalised support they need.
For a young person in particular, that could be work experience opportunities. Often, children from poorer backgrounds do not have the connections to get those opportunities, and we are very much hoping that bringing careers services into jobcentres will allow professionals to help those young people particularly to get the opportunities we want to see them having. We see that as part of the package we want to offer to individuals when they are either starting off and trying to get into a job, or when they are in a job but want to progress and move on.
Q196 Lee Barron: I will briefly raise the issue of the wide differences in attainment and opportunity between different areas of the country. There is a lot of talk about devolution and everything else, but I would like to know about the areas where there is no devolution. What will we do to measure the areas that have been most left behind? What will the child poverty strategy do to address that?
Dame Diana Johnson: That is a very good question. You are absolutely right that we do not have mayors everywhere, and we have to work with local authorities. We have some really good relationships and we know that some local authorities are doing excellent work.
The strategy is about setting a view for the whole United Kingdom, recognising that there will be differences in different areas—rural or urban; with mayors or local authorities. I am very much hoping that we will be able to pull together the things that work and can be used as best practice around the country.
As a Hull MP, I fully appreciate that the issues around disadvantaged and poor kids in my patch are perhaps quite different from the problems in your patch, but there will be some commonalities that we can learn from. We are—this is very DWP language—on a journey, but it is the start of the implementation of the strategy. We want to make sure that we bring in the experiences of all local authorities, mayors, combined authorities and the devolved Governments.
The other thing we have not mentioned is the crisis and resilience funding that the Government have made available to local authorities. That is an important part of this, so that local authorities have a pot of money to build up resilience in their local areas and tackle the particular problems they have around poverty—particularly, say, food poverty.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed. I thank the Ministers and officials for being with us to answer all our questions. That brings the oral evidence sessions for this inquiry, and today’s session, to a close.