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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
That this House takes note of the Government’s actions to tackle child poverty.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, it is a real pleasure to introduce this debate on the first UK-wide child poverty strategy, and strategy for England, since 2010, during which time child poverty, particularly deep child poverty, has worsened. I am grateful to the noble Lords taking part, and I hope that the debate will provide an opportunity to highlight some of the strategy’s strengths and to suggest where it might go further in tackling child poverty effectively.
One of the strategy’s great strengths has been the taskforce’s wide engagement with stakeholders, including, in particular, parents and children with experience of poverty. Four of those parents, who were involved in the Changing Realities participatory project, said in the foreword:
“We have experienced genuine listening and collaboration, and it has been encouraging to feel that our lived experience can and should influence policy solutions”.
There is a commitment to continuing this engagement as part of the strategy’s evaluation and development, which I will return to.
Although the strategy document itself did not mention children’s rights, a subsequent child rights impact assessment, published alongside a child-friendly version of the strategy, emphasises:
“From the outset, development of the strategy has been guided by a children’s rights approach”,
and that this will continue by
“involving children in monitoring its impact”,
which is very welcome.
Another very positive aspect of the strategy document is its language and tone. It makes a very strong case for action on child poverty, starting with the Prime Minister’s foreword, setting out both the moral case and its importance as an economic and social investment in our future. Child poverty costs us, as a society. Moreover, the document recognises the key role played by social security and, indeed, uses that term rather than what has become the pejorative language of “welfare”. The tone is a far cry from the dominant false narrative of a “ballooning” welfare budget. A companion evidence pack spells out how previous cuts mean that basic benefit levels are worth “significantly less” than in 2010-11, and how this has contributed to the worsening of child poverty.
This lays the ground for the most important and welcome policy shift: the total abolition of the heinous two-child limit, which I will not dwell on because we have already debated it, other than to remind noble Lords that its abolition represents the single most effective means of reducing child poverty at a stroke, supported by modest real increases in the universal credit standard allowance for the rest of this Parliament. According to the latest published official estimate, abolition of the limit will reduce the number of children in poverty by 550,000 by 2030, and as many as 7.1 million children will be in gaining households, of whom 1.4 million are in deep material poverty.
Nevertheless, official projections suggest that there will still be around 4 million children—29% of all children—in poverty at the end of this Parliament, and Barnardo’s warns that the depth and severity of poverty could worsen further. The challenge facing the Government is a measure of the dire situation inherited from the previous Government. As the Resolution Foundation warns, the strategy is still working against economic forces and other policy choices that could weaken its impact.
One such policy choice is the retention of the benefit cap, which is a key driver of deep poverty, especially among single-parent families. I know that removal of the cap is not government policy, even though evidence suggests its impact on employment has been pretty minimal, while the hardship caused is considerable. However, at the very least, I ask, yet again, for them to consider ways of mitigating its impact, including annual uprating of the threshold limits. According to CPAG, of which I am honorary president, if they had been uprated in line with inflation since 2016, they would be 26% higher now.
The other main social security omission is the failure to end the freeze on housing allowance, which aggravates poverty among families living in the private rented sector. More generally, there is no hint of the further investment in social security that is needed if it is to provide for a decent life, genuine security and a healthy diet, as argued by the Food Foundation. Yet analysis suggests that, as the record of the last Labour Government shows:
“We can only get significant and lasting reductions in child poverty by investing in our social security system”.
The same analysis, published by CASE at the LSE, also shows that
“changes in parental employment, whilst important, will never deliver change to child poverty rates on the scale we need to see”.
We should remember that nearly three-quarters of children in poverty live in working households. Certainly, there are reforms that could ensure that paid work is more effective in tackling child poverty, as recent analysis by Action for Children and the IPPR demonstrates. However, it will never be the silver bullet that some politicians suggest.
One such reform that the Government are very aware of is childcare, which is again of particular importance to single-parent families. The IPPR and Action for Children research underlined just how important childcare is to both finding and progressing in paid work, especially for mothers, whose poverty is still inextricably linked to that of their children. Childcare is an important element in the holistic approach taken by the strategy.
Other important elements include action on homelessness and the use of bed and breakfast accommodation; reduction in some of the costs of education—which is crucial if every child is to achieve and thrive at school—including the very welcome extension of free school meals; improved maintenance provisions; and strengthened local services, especially those prioritising prevention. These are aimed as much at reducing the impact of child poverty as its incidence but are nevertheless welcome.
Here, I wish attention could have been paid to how services are delivered, as the experience of poverty is worsened when service users feel they are not treated with dignity and respect, thereby worsening the stigma which continues to hurt people living in poverty. This is something that a human rights approach to poverty would address, as recognised in Scotland and Wales. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, in warmly welcoming the strategy, argues that its
“implementation would be significantly strengthened by taking a human rights based approach”.
The strategy recognises the important role played by local authorities, but in the words of Resolve Poverty:
“It will need to give greater consideration to how localities in England will be supported to develop and embed strong strategic responses to poverty and in ensuring that all localities are properly resourced and supported to deliver strategic anti-poverty activity”.
It would like to see
“the introduction of a requirement on localities to develop anti-poverty strategies”.
Another hole in the strategy concerns migrant children in families with no recourse to public funds, which includes child benefit, the key bedrock of support for children. While its explicit recognition of this group of children and commitment to ensuring
“they receive the support they require, regardless of their immigration status”
are very welcome, it has ignored calls for easing the application of the NRPF rule, which can spell abject poverty for much of a child’s childhood. Moreover, proposed reforms to the asylum and settlement rules are likely to worsen poverty among migrant children, already at disproportionate risk of poverty. Sarah, a refugee parent, in a recent blog warns that any further limit on support for refugees
“would be devastating for my family”.
I look forward to the promised baseline report, which will give more detail about implementation and monitoring, elaborating on what looks like a well thought out monitoring and evaluation framework. I do not know how much my noble friend can say about that today, but could we perhaps have a few hints? I was very encouraged by the written evidence from the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions to the select committee inquiry, which stated the Government have
“committed to maintain a core, central child poverty team, with cross-government oversight by Ministers”.
That was not my original understanding, and I and others were a bit worried about whether future responsibility lay just with the DWP, so I wonder whether my noble friend could say more about this.
I hope the baseline report will say something about targets, or at least milestones, in the name of accountability and transparency, as called for by a wide range of organisations. That would be a way of demonstrating to the electorate the Government’s intent and their belief in the strategy, a point that I had hoped the noble Lord, Lord Bird, would be able to expand on—but he has unfortunately not got to his place, so he will not be able to.
With regard to monitoring, there was an exchange between the chair of the Social Mobility Commission and the Work and Pensions and Education Select Committees in an oral evidence session which reminded me that the Social Mobility Commission started life as the Child Poverty Commission. This made me think that perhaps the resurrection of the latter, with input from those with lived experience, would be the ideal independent body to monitor the strategy, with its reports published and debated annually in Parliament. I would welcome my noble friend’s thoughts on that.
The strategy document describes it as just
“the first step on our road to ending child poverty”,
emphasised by the Education Secretary, who presented it to the Commons as “a strong start”. This debate provides an opportunity to think about further steps—how we best build on that strong start. There is a lot of talk in politics at present about the need for hope, which we heard more of in the first debate today, particularly when so many are struggling with the cost of living crisis. When I hear senior Ministers talking about tackling child poverty as this Government’s moral mission, it gives me hope. More importantly, it offers hope to the millions of children and parents who remain in poverty, despite the measures already taken by the Government.
I will finish with more words from the foreword from the parents involved in Changing Realities:
“This strategy begins the work of lifting the weight of poverty off the shoulders of millions of families. With some of the changes, families like ours may start to breathe again. Not just survive but live with dignity. We’d all like to feel secure knowing that if something breaks, or a bill goes up, we won’t be pushed into crisis. More than anything, we want our children to have opportunities without us constantly having to say ‘no, not this time’ … But we must not get complacent and stop there. All of us owe it to the children who are relying on decision makers to put them first … and ensure we are doing everything we can to propel our children into a future filled with hope and not despair”.
I beg to move.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate. It is very timely in recognising the ongoing challenges that families in this country face, including issues around inflation, the reduction in the number of jobs available and the increase in unemployment, as well as the need to tackle the strategic challenges around NEETs. While we are talking about children today, the increase in youth employment really worries me about the future of our country.
I agree with the noble Baroness on one issue, and that is childcare. I lost this argument with other Ministers when I was in government, but we need to look very carefully to try to increase significantly the number of child carers—not necessarily nurseries—to help people get into and stay in work, and to expand the number of hours they have. It is all well and good having 38 weeks a year when the schools are sitting, but that does not help when someone still has that job in the summer or over Christmas. They are the sort of strategic challenges that we need to face.
I am very proud of my three years at the DWP. Working with my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott, we did a lot of good to try to help people get out of poverty. One of the battles I had was about the definition of poverty. The British Social Attitudes survey is very clear that people do not agree that getting 60% of the median income automatically means that someone is poor—as the noble Baroness said, they prefer the concept of deeper poverty. Lots of our big organisations will continue to try to use relative poverty as the only way to consider the definition. I was slightly bemused that, during Covid, relative poverty fell—it did so because it is a statistic—but it did not reflect how people felt.
As we learned in the message that today’s DWP Secretary of State exchanged with Lord Mandelson—I think that is still what he is called—too many MPs are asking what taxes can be put up to pay for more benefits for others. He said that they are asking the wrong questions, and he was right to do so. That is why I was somewhat concerned about the child poverty strategy, as it seemed to continue to focus on how more cash benefits or other benefits would address the statistical change but not the strategic change.
I think that 60% of the median income last year was £22,370. It is no surprise that a lot more single-parent homes are in relative poverty. We had a debate the other week about child maintenance; I do not want to rehearse all that, but I will continue to make one plea. For those parents—mainly men—who are not contributing to their children’s income, because they are either on benefits or just not paying anything, we need to make sure that they are a top priority in their local job centre when it comes to getting a job. I really need to stress that. In the latest British Social Attitudes survey, only 29% of the population was happy to increase taxes in order to do that, yet that is exactly what has happened with removing the two-child benefit cap.
I am conscious that, for many Peers, this has been a long-term campaign, and I accept that they disagreed with what we did. But we did that with a purpose of reflecting that the welfare system is intended to be a hand-up and to support people desperately in need. Yet, we are now in a situation where, due to other factors, everybody on universal credit who has children gets free school meals. That is difficult when there are 220,000 households with children on universal credit are actually getting over £40,000 in household income. It is difficult when the warm home discount has been expanded to every recipient of universal credit. It actually means that the smaller cohort that used to get the money, using more energy and more with children, now get less discount in cash terms as a consequence.
There are all these little changes start to happen, and all these extra things mean that, as used to happen with tax credits, you would be almost insane to work a minute more than 16 hours per week, unless you work full-time, because you would lose money. Now, families are, very carefully and perfectly rationally, adjusting their hours and not moving to full-time work, because they will lose out. These are strategic problems that we need to face as a country.
Finally, debt is a real challenge. I give credit to John Glen in the last Government, who introduced the breathing space approach. It was a good initiative, and I hope that it gets extended even further. One thing that happened in the child poverty strategy is that debt advice will be included in neighbourhood health as an approach to helping people. In the recently published framework, there is no mention of debt advice services to be commissioned. I hope that the Minister can go back to health and think about that.
I think that this House is united that we desperately want fewer children in poverty—ideally, we want no child in poverty but, given those statistics, there almost certainly will be. But let us do our best to make sure that every child has the best opportunity going forward.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on securing the debate and thank her for her tireless work in addressing child poverty. Like many others, I welcomed the publication of the Government’s child poverty strategy and was delighted by the Government’s decision to abolish the two-child limit on universal credit. Like others, I felt that the Government missed the opportunity to deliver some quick wins—measures that would not require legislation yet would make a tangible difference to children’s lives.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, already mentioned a number of these measures, but I wish to focus on just one: auto-enrolment for free school meals. On the face of it, it is a very modest proposal, yet it would have profound positive consequences for some of the disadvantaged children in the country. Around 250,000 children in England who are eligible for free school meals are not enrolled to receive it. That is approximately one in 10 of all those who should be benefiting from this scheme; in the north-east, it is one in five.
The entitlement exists, but it is not making its full potential impact. There is a substantial body of evidence, including a major cost-benefit analysis conducted by PwC for impacts on urban health, which demonstrated that free school meals improve concentration in the classroom, boost attendance, raise attainment and improve long-term health outcomes. Yet, some of the children most in need of this benefit are missing out. This is because under the present system, families must apply for free school meals. They must navigate forms, eligibility checks and, in many local authorities, repeat the process each time circumstances change. This creates administrative barriers, stigma and confusion, particularly for parents with limited digital access, for those for whom English is an additional language or for families in unstable or temporary accommodation.
I previously spoke in your Lordships’ House about the poverty-shame nexus—a mutually reinforcing relationship between material hardship and the emotional experience of shame. This is particularly relevant as, time and again, researchers have found that shame and stigma are among the biggest barriers that prevent parents from applying for free school meals.
This is not only a question of feeding hungry children, though that alone would be a good enough reason to introduce it. Free school meal eligibility is the gateway to pupil-premium funding, currently worth £1,515 per eligible primary school pupil and £1,075 at secondary level. When five local authorities introduced auto-enrolment in October 2023, they identified more than 2,500 additional eligible children in their first cohorts, with opt-out rates of less than 1%.
The question arises: why, if local authorities have piloted this measure, does it now require government action? Last year, the charity Feeding Britain convened a working group of 29 local authorities to examine this question. I commend its report to the Minister. In brief, however, this approach reaches only those families who already engage with their local authority for other welfare support, which, again, because of stigma, not all do.
Most importantly, the managed migration of families from legacy benefits on to universal credit will, over the next few years, substantially reduce the number of families applying to local authorities for housing benefit and similar payments, so the window of opportunity for local authorities to introduce auto-enrolment is closing. The working group’s proposal, which I commend to the House, is to build automatic registration into universal credit itself, extending the sort of mechanism that already exists for council tax support and for the NHS Healthy Start scheme.
I know that this Government are committed to social mobility, and education is at the heart of achieving this. Can the Minister explain, therefore, why this measure—one which would help direct resources more accurately to schools serving disadvantaged children, with no changes required to the pupil premium framework—was not included in the child poverty strategy?
Lord Kestenbaum (Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Lister for securing this vital debate. The Government’s strategy on child poverty should inspire the nation. It has mobilised us all in common cause around what is clearly the fight of our lives: to finally break the link between economic background and life chances, and in so doing, to lift our children out of the bleak, desperate world of crushing poverty, thereby giving them faith in the future.
The causes of 21st-century child poverty have been well documented. There has been much focus, and rightly so, on financial inputs and outputs that are, respectively, plummeting income and rising costs. However, amid the flurry of these high-impact interventions and initiatives that emerge from the child poverty strategy, there remains one of the most potent levers of all at our disposal to pull as vigorously as we can, and urgently so, and that is the role of inspired schools and inspiring teachers.
There is a simple formula for us to consider in this debate. Of all the levers at our disposal, education remains the single most effective way to genuinely attack that toxic link between background and success, and we know that, at the heart of that, are the heroes and heroines of the front line: our teachers. We know that it is teachers who are the most important in-school factor in improving outcomes for children, especially our poorest children.
In that regard, we would do well to reflect on a report published yesterday by Teach First, where I am proud to serve as a trustee. Entitled Class Dismissed, this new policy report shines a light on what has come to be termed “the persistently disadvantaged”—that is, deep poverty. That term is defined in simple ways. Persistently disadvantaged children are those who spend 80% of their school life eligible for free school meals. Often these proxy measures and technical definitions can seem remote, but, to be clear, that is more than 1 million children living in homes where often annual family income does not allow for the covering of the cost of basic essentials throughout the vast majority of a child’s life.
For these children, the lifecycle becomes painfully vicious. The report showed that, by the time they reach GCSE, the poorest children are nearly two years behind their non-disadvantaged peers in learning. Twenty-five per cent of the deeply poor, the persistently disadvantaged, will not be in post-16 education or training. From there, it is a steady decline, with meagre employment opportunities and lower earnings—and so it goes on. These bleak outcomes are not only the catastrophic consequences of child poverty but one of the clearest predictors of whether such poverty recurs in the next generation of children: the ultimate vicious cycle.
Yet we learned something else from the Teach First report that serves to inform this debate. These disastrous life outcomes for the persistently disadvantaged—the deeply poor—are not, and do not have to be, inevitable. We have seen pockets of real breakthrough, where strong school leaders and high-quality teaching can dramatically improve outcomes for our poorest children. These are schools which are not just feeding hungry children, as they do, not just buying them uniforms from their own school budgets, as they do, but vitally, and perhaps above all, creating for the deeply poor, the persistently disadvantaged, real beacons of hope, real aspiration, and a genuine sense—no cliché intended—that the opportunities which these children will pass to their own children will be immeasurably better than the life chances given to them. The cycle can be broken. Teachers, inspired and inspiring, can do that. They are doing it every day in classrooms up and down the country.
The Government have made one thing abundantly clear: they are absolutely determined to break the link between economic background and opportunity, and schools can be at the heart of that national mission. Yet we know from this report, too, and elsewhere, that schools serving the poorest communities find recruitment and retention of teachers exceptionally difficult. If we do not give that tangible attention, we will weaken one of the strongest levers at our disposal, which can lift children out of poverty permanently.
So, with that in mind, I hope my noble friend the Minister agrees that placing schools and teachers at the heart of our child poverty strategy gives us a fighting chance of breaking the cycle. It does not have to be an inevitable downward one.
This debate is clearly at times about financial allocation and definitely about policy choices. But, above all, it goes to the very heart of the society we wish to be and, in that sense, it is nothing short of a moral imperative.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for bringing forward this important debate.
Few issues test the conscience more directly than child poverty. Across the UK today, around 4.5 million children are growing up in poverty. In Wales, around 31% of children are living in relative poverty and 26% of children in working households are living in poverty. These are not just statistics; they represent children going without essentials, families under constant pressure, and opportunities limited before life has properly begun.
I speak about this not only as a Member of this House and a campaigner but from personal experience. I grew up in poverty on a council estate in Wales, and during that time I was also a young carer. I know what it means to take on complex responsibility early, to balance care with education and to live with the quiet strain that so often accompanies hardship at home. That experience simply does not pass. It shapes your outlook, your opportunities and your sense of what lies ahead.
Child poverty is not inevitable; it is a result of political choices, and it can be changed by political choices, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. That is why I want to focus on the approach being taken by the new Plaid Cymru-led Welsh Government, who have made a clear and deliberate decision to prioritise tackling child poverty. That commitment will soon be reflected in the draft Budget to be laid next week, because, if we are serious about addressing poverty, it must be reflected not only in words but in the allocation of resources.
At the heart of this approach are practical, targeted policies designed to ease pressure on families and give every child the best possible start in life. One such policy proposed is the Cynnal payment, drawing inspiration from the Scottish child payment. We have seen in Scotland that direct financial support can reduce poverty and improve outcomes for children. A similar approach in Wales has the potential to provide real stability and dignity for families who need it most. I ask the Minister whether His Majesty’s Government will support the Welsh Government in the delivery of the Cynnal payment.
Alongside this is a transformative commitment on childcare. Plaid Cymru has announced an initial £55 million investment to expand childcare provision, enabling thousands more two year-olds to access funded childcare. This is the first step towards an ambition at the end of the term of year-round support, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey: year-round universal free childcare from nine months, which at full rollout would be the most generous childcare offer anywhere in the UK.
This matters profoundly. Childcare costs in Wales are among the highest in the UK, forcing many parents, particularly mothers, to reduce working hours or leave the labour market altogether. Expanding affordable childcare is therefore both a social and an economic policy. It supports parents back into work, strengthens household incomes and improves outcomes for children. It is, in short, about breaking the cycles of poverty before they become entrenched.
However, while action in Wales is essential, we must also recognise the limits of devolved powers. Many of the most significant levers, especially welfare, taxation and employment policy, remain His Majesty’s Government’s responsibility, so I shall ask the Minister a number of questions. First, what steps are the Government taking to support the creation of higher-paid, more secure jobs in parts of Wales where low pay remains persistent? Secondly, what assessment has been made of the impact of UK-wide welfare policies on poverty levels in Wales, and what consideration is given to reforms that would better support low-income families? Thirdly, how do the Government intend to work in genuine partnership with the devolved Administrations, so that action taken in all parts of the UK is reinforced and not constrained by decisions made here when certain powers overlap.
Tackling child poverty requires action at every level of government. It demands investment, co-ordination and, above all, political will and prioritisation, but it also demands something more fundamental: that we recognise the lived reality behind the figures and act with the urgency that those lives deserve, because every child in every corner of these isles deserves not just the chance to get by but the chance to thrive.
This must be not a partisan endeavour but a shared mission across this House and beyond. We have a responsibility to work together constructively and with purpose to ensure that no child is left behind. If we truly believe that, we must be willing to match our words with action and resources until no child’s future is defined by the circumstances of their birth.
Baroness Paul of Shepherd’s Bush (Lab)
I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for securing this debate. She talked about a “strong start” and my comments come in that context.
This is an important debate that speaks to what it means to be Labour: a determination to lift the most vulnerable children in the most difficult circumstances and to give all children, especially the most disadvantaged, the best possible start in life. The child poverty strategy is a strong and serious piece of work. It recognises the complexity of the challenges facing families and the need for a cross-governmental response, and I welcome its intent. If I may, however, I shall focus on an emerging dimension of child poverty that we cannot afford to overlook: the differing outcomes for boys and girls, even when they experience the same early disadvantage. I think the evidence is becoming clear that child poverty is not a uniform experience. It is shaped not only by low income, poor housing and food insecurity, but by gender, where different developmental patterns, expectations and responses to disadvantage begin to drive very different outcomes.
When we look closely, we see that while poverty harms all children, boys are often more likely to experience its most damaging and long-term consequences. Education provides the clearest examples. Boys from low-income households arrive at school less ready to learn, fall behind early and leave with fewer and lower qualifications than girls facing the same disadvantages. They are also twice as likely to be permanently excluded. This matters. When boys disengage early, the consequences cascade: lower attainment, reduced employment prospects and a far greater risk of long-term disadvantage. Exclusion is not just a disciplinary response; it is too often a poverty pathway.
We already have some insight into where this leads. Alan Milburn’s excellent interim report on young people and work describes the scale of the NEET problem and amplifies how this is not just a labour market issue but a deeper disengagement from education, work and the structures that support adult life. Within that, there is a clear and growing gender dimension. Some boys face a double disadvantage, being both poor and male. I am deeply concerned about this. I worry for the boys and young men whose life chances are constrained by that compounded disadvantage. I worry for their families too, who support them often without the tools to help. I also worry for our society, because the consequences extend beyond the individuals, their lost potential, their growing alienation and the weakening of our social fabric. We are seeing the growing consequences all around us. We must also recognise the role of social media. While it affects all young people, young boys are being drawn towards content that amplifies grievance, promotes damaging models of masculinity and often creates a false sense of belonging where one should not be happening.
This brings me to my central point. If outcomes differ, our response must evolve. A child poverty strategy that treats children as a uniform group risks missing those who are falling furthest behind. Equality of intention does not guarantee equality of outcome. We need a more targeted, evidence-based approach. That means recognising early literacy gaps and providing focused support for boys who fall behind in reading and communication. It means understanding why boys are more likely to be excluded, and intervening earlier, keeping them within the school system that best protects them. It means creating clearer and more engaging pathways into skills, training and employment—routes that connect them with those young men who are currently drifting away from that opportunity. It also means recognising the importance of positive male role models.
For many boys growing up in poverty, consistent male presence in family, school and communities is limited. Where that absence exists, it matters. I grew up without knowing my father, so I know how difficult it is to talk about this subject, but it is incredibly important that we do. Boys benefit from seeing positive, stable examples of adulthood—men who model responsibility, resilience and constructive engagement with work and society. Where else will they learn how to be a man?
This is not about creating division, nor is it about diminishing the progress needed for young girls and young women; it is about recognising where child poverty is deepest and responding with clarity and purpose. A strategy that works for most children but fails the most vulnerable boys is not yet a strategy that works. If we are serious about social justice, which I know we are, we must be serious about these outcomes. I want every boy, however difficult their start in life, to grow up in a country that sees them, nurtures them and helps them flourish. We cannot afford to look away from this. I ask the Minister to consider my thoughts when she responds.
Lord Babudu (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for securing this important debate; she has spent decades making poverty visible when others preferred not to look. I declare my interest as executive director of Impact on Urban Health, a health equity funder. We fund organisations that work with children, such as Changing Realities, the Child Poverty Action Group and Save the Children. However, I am speaking today in a personal capacity.
Tackling child poverty and addressing its effects has been at the root of so much of my work over the last two decades. For much of that time, it has felt like trying to stop the tide going out. In my work, I have seen the poor-quality temporary accommodation that families get stuck in, to great expense for local authorities. I have seen the poverty that schools try their best to paper over, because the levels of need are such a barrier to learning.
I have heard stories of how families have unexpectedly found themselves underemployed and on universal credit. The numbers in this strategy bear that out. A child eligible for free school meals is already five months behind by the time they start school. One in four children from the poorest families gets five good GCSEs—the figure is three in four for children from the richest families.
In that context, I welcome this strategy. It is cross-government in design, it was built with families, and it has great policy content. Removing the two-child limit, as other noble Lords have said, is the most effective intervention the Government could have made to tackle child poverty. Extending free school meals to families on universal credit matters too, as do increases in the national living wage and rates of universal credit.
There are two less highlighted parts of this strategy that I want to name, because they point to things the Government are quietly getting right. The first is a plan to draw in private and social investment alongside public spending. Public money will not be enough. The Better Futures Fund has great potential: government paying for social outcomes, not activities, and using that commitment to pull in capital that would otherwise sit on the sidelines. It is already happening in Bristol, helping to finance affordable housing. We need more of these innovative solutions.
The second part is the commitment, repeated in the Child Poverty Strategy, to commence the socio-economic duty under Section 1 of the Equality Act. Nearly 16 years on from that Act’s commencement, it is beyond time for this duty to commence. I hope the Government can set a date for its commencement soon.
There are three areas where the strategy can and should go further. The first is binding targets. Child Poverty Action Group and Save the Children conducted research, funded by Impact on Urban Health, with 40 practitioners to help inform the strategy. On targets, those practitioners were unanimous. Binding targets matter not because they are magic but because, when there is no well-understood target to hit, it is easier for departments to deprioritise. With the baseline report on child poverty levels due this summer, now is a great moment to change that.
The second area is the benefit cap. The two-child limit removal is welcome, but the cap undermines it. The Government’s own impact assessment estimates that around 70,000 families subject to the benefit cap will see little or no gain from the two-child limit removal. The cap bears down on those in deepest poverty, especially sole-parent families, who make up nearly 70% of capped households. These are not people who can easily work more hours to escape it. They are often sole carers, many with young children. For them, the cap is not an incentive but a trap.
I have similar concern that the local housing allowance, which has long not kept up with the cost of housing in several cities and is currently frozen until 2027, will undermine the Government’s child poverty reduction ambitions, given that 1.7 million children living in poverty live in the private rented sector. I had planned to flag a concern about the child poverty unit’s closure and replacement by a team within the DWP, but it would be great if the Minister could clarify whether that will sit more centrally. Where accountability sits determines whether a cross-government strategy holds or quietly fractures. Scotland put its child poverty Act through its Parliament and set up a statutory independent commission to monitor delivery. That difference, if it exists, creates a risk.
This strategy was built in the right way: across government, with families, and taking evidence seriously. I want to see it delivered in the same way. That means targets set this summer, against which any of us can measure progress. It means a co-ordination function with real authority; and it means closing gaps like the benefit cap, the local housing allowance freeze and the socio-economic duty—still to commence—that will otherwise risk making the strategy land well short of what it could achieve.
Baroness Nargund (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Babudu, and I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for securing this very important debate.
I want to focus my remarks on what I know best: health. Child poverty is not simply a social issue; it is a public health crisis. Unless we address it, we will continue to pay the price for decades to come in poorer health, greater inequality and rising demands on our NHS.
As we have already heard, 31% of children in the UK are living in relative poverty after housing costs. In a classroom of 30 children, that is 10 children whose future health is already being shaped not by their talents, aspirations or potential but by the circumstances into which they were born.
Indeed, the impact of poverty on health begins even before birth. As a doctor, I find the evidence compelling. We know that the intrauterine environment plays a profound role in determining future health. The pioneering work of Professor David Barker of Southampton demonstrated that poor nutrition and deprivation during pregnancy can programme the developing foetus in ways that increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and hypertension in adult life. In other words, poverty leaves a biological imprint before a child has even taken their first breath.
In fact, the first chapter of a child’s health story is written before conception, through the physical and metabolic health of parents. Children born into poverty are more likely to be born with low birth weight. They are less likely to survive their first year of life. As they grow, they face higher rates of asthma, chronic illness, developmental delay and poor mental health. Nearly one in five children are not meeting their expected developmental milestones by the age of two. These outcomes are not inevitable. They are preventable, because they are the predicted consequences of deprivation.
What is striking, both from clinical practice and evidence, is how clearly the pathway runs from wealth to health. When families have sufficient resources, children are healthier. When families are poor, children are sicker. Poverty and ill health reinforce one another. It is a vicious cycle.
The mechanisms are well understood. Housing sits at the top of the list. New data reveals that 104 children in England died between April 2019 and December 2024 with temporary accommodation identified as a contributing factor to their ill health or death, and 76 of those children were under the age of one. These are not simply housing statistics; they are the conditions in which children’s brains and bodies are developing.
I therefore welcome the Government’s commitment to tackling child poverty with their strategy, focusing on economic growth, the expansion of free school meals and breakfast provision, Best Start family hubs, and measures to increase the supply of social housing.
The forthcoming 10-year health plan presents an important opportunity to narrow health inequalities. Community health hubs could become a cornerstone of prevention. But they must be properly staffed, accessible, and equipped not only to diagnose illness but to support well-being, early intervention and family resilience, and they must take the needs of local communities into account.
If we truly wish to build a healthier nation, we must recognise a simple truth: child poverty today becomes adult illness tomorrow. Every child growing up in poverty represents not only a failure of opportunity but a future health inequality waiting to happen. The most effective preventive medicine we can offer is not found in a hospital or clinic, or on a prescription. It is ensuring that every child has enough food to eat, a warm home to live in, and the opportunity to thrive.
Tackling child poverty is not only a moral imperative; it is one of the most powerful health interventions available to us. If today’s child poverty is tomorrow’s adult illness, tackling poverty is one of the most powerful forms of prevention. I therefore ask my noble friend the Minister to urge the Government to place that principle at the heart of their strategy and to work with DHSC.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the clearly heartfelt remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Nargund.
Child poverty is a scourge on society, and that it should be at such a high level in this country is truly appalling. The Government’s latest strategy to alleviate it is a positive move and shows some welcome joined-up thinking, but, with the exception of the two-child benefit cap being lifted, any real impact will be felt only over time and, however good the intentions, it is implementation that counts—and on that there must be some misgivings.
Currently, all good intentions have to be set in the realistic context that there is a dire shortage of cash, so it is essential that those seeking to address this issue should look beyond government resources to the local community. Take, for instance, the fact that more than one-third of children now start out in the education system unequipped to cope with the basics that are rightly expected. The strong risk is that this disadvantage will dog them throughout their lives. There can be many reasons why a four year-old is still in nappies and barely able to speak, sometimes unaware even of what their own name is, but a lack of cash cannot be the sole explanation. Inadequate parenting may be due to a lack of support and guidance, reliance by harassed parents on screen time as a substitute carer, or sheer despair at having to cope with myriad problems, from poor housing to ill health.
The best family hubs, as they become established, should begin to help those parents, but that will require the parents to engage with them, and they may prove hard to reach or even wary of things that they associate too closely with government. However, more practised and confident parents may be able to provide the back-up and encouragement that some parents need, and the most effective way of getting them together with those who need them is likely to be through the schools. One organisation that is pioneering this approach is the Parenting Circle. Its model is to use professional trainers to equip teachers and a core group of parents to work with those parents in need of support. Here, I must declare an interest: my husband was a chairman of this organisation, so I am very familiar with its work.
One small charity can reach only so many people, but it demonstrates just one way that the community could help achieve results without hefty government investment and intervention. Could the Minister say whether the Government are exploring or will explore such use of volunteers to help in this desperate area? Four year-olds should not be leaving their first year at school still in need of help in basic training. Unless we can improve the start that these children have in life, I am afraid they have little chance of climbing out of the trough that they did not intend starting out in.
That brings me to my next point. Just as damaging as financial poverty—in fact, probably more so—is poverty of aspiration. It is a killer. It numbs people. It is a dreadful affliction. It blights the lives of individuals and the prospects of the society they grow up in. It is a terrible condemnation of this country that so many young people should apparently have so little hope. It is a problem with deep roots—in some areas, it goes back to the loss of the industrial base—but it appears that a breakdown in family structures has contributed to leaving a raft of youngsters without positive role models.
At a secondary school I visited in Kent, the head teacher told me he saw his first priority not as educating the children but as providing them with some sense of stability. What does that say about our society? Government funding, even if it were available in bucketloads, could only make a contribution towards helping provide some of that stability and aspiration. Strong communities can help: there is much more that can be done, and the Government are, at least with their better communities pot, trying to reach them. But churches and business groups—everybody—could do a bit more to help these people. Schools must take care not to exacerbate economic differences. As we have heard, the free school meals stigma can really hurt.
My final point is that all children should have access to sport, dance, drama, art and music, each of which can open the door to new horizons for so many children, and in each of which individuals can flourish whatever their background—as we saw last night.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft. I am pleased to be able to take part in this debate. I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for securing it and for her comprehensive introduction. One could say that it left very little else to be said. My noble friend has campaigned on these issues for decades in this House, as an academic and through her work at the Child Poverty Action Group. She is dedicated and focused and has a formidable grasp of this complex area. I pay tribute to her for her life’s work. I know she felt as emotional as I did when, in April this year, the announcement was made ending the two-child benefit limit. I also thank my noble friend Lady Sherlock for all she has done, and for her dedication as a member of the Front Bench. With all the competing demands faced by government, I cannot think of a safer pair of hands.
When I was introduced to this House 16 years ago, my maiden speech was on the subject of poverty, so it felt right to take part in this timely debate. The late noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, was one of my sponsors. I worked with him on welfare and local government topics month in and month out. He was a modest man with huge ability, and I felt it right to mention him today.
When I was a member of the Low Pay Commission in 1998, we made the first recommendation for a statutory national minimum wage. The pressure was enormous, remember? A million jobs were going to be lost. It taught me two things about poverty. First, in 1997 there were no adequate statistics about women’s income because they did not record those who were paid too little to contribute to national insurance. There were no figures. Secondly, a minimum wage on its own would not help a single woman with more than two children: the figures would have to have been too high and would have been unaffordable.
The Government’s acceptance that poverty is a multifaceted issue is quite right. It involves education and housing, as well as social security and income. They have increased the national living wage and the basic rate of universal credit above inflation. There is support for childcare, the extension of free breakfast clubs and more investment in social and affordable homes. The Government are to be congratulated on all these measures, but unfortunately the beneficiaries do not own newspapers and are not normally influencers on social media, so these quiet measures do not get the credit they deserve.
I cannot forget that for 14 years before the Labour Government came in, poverty and homelessness were on the increase. If a child in poverty started school at the age of five in 2010, they would almost certainly have left education by 2024—a whole school generation deprived of the best opportunities. The excellent briefing sent to us by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists sets out its crucial work in tackling child poverty through helping to support children’s speech, language and communication skills, and ensuring that services are accessible to families living in poverty.
On the issue of accessing local services and support—I agree with everything that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester said on this—the Government are launching the Pride in Place programme and Best Start Family Hubs, as well as launching the new crisis and resilience fund and increasing the early years pupil premium, which have already been referred to.
I have a question for my noble friend, having read the briefings from the ChurchWorks commission and Barnardo’s. Given their excellent work in communities to combat poverty, are they given sufficient credit by the Government, and how will the Government work with these organisations to ensure a successful strategy? That point was also picked up by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, in her contribution. As my noble friend Lady Lister said, we understand that there will be a report in the summer of 2026. I think we are all hoping that the Minister will show a bit of petticoat on the monitoring and evaluation framework, including updated findings from the latest poverty statistics publications. Can she give us an idea of when the summer of 2026 is?
Finally, although I understand the financial limits the Government are facing, if something could be done to raise the benefit cap so that larger families can enjoy the two-child benefit lift, that would be much appreciated.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all the organisations that provided briefings on this crucial subject. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Lister on securing this debate and pay tribute to her for the considerable and tireless work she has done in this area over, frankly, years. The impacts of child and family poverty are many. Tackling it is the morally and politically right thing to do for children and their families now and in the future, as well as for our public services and the wider economy. Why is that? Poverty not only blights the lives of children; it can determine their future in a wholly negative way. They do less well at school, they are likely to have much poorer health—as we have heard in detail—and, of course, they often die at a younger age than their better-off peers. Frankly, that is a disgrace in what is, after all, still a rich country.
On education, we know that the figure of 4.5 million children is the equivalent of something like eight to 10 in every class of 30, although child poverty is not equally in evidence in all schools or, indeed, in all areas nationally. Shamefully, as I think we have already heard, seven in 10 children who live in poverty come from a family where at least one person is working—I am sure we will hear more of that later. We know that, even in their early years, children who live in poverty are over 4.5 months behind their better-off peers, and this grows to approaching two years by the time they reach GCSEs, as recorded by the Sutton Trust and Teach First. It is no surprise, then, that four in five teachers report seeing children who are too fatigued and hungry to learn. Four in five teachers have bought food for hungry pupils, paying for this out of their own pockets.
Of course, breakfast clubs are very welcome. The rollout of free school meals to families on universal credit from September 2026 is also very welcome, although I believe that universal free school meals would do even more for us as a society. Particularly welcome is the raising of the two-child limit from April this year. However, even if these elements are in place, over 4 million children will still be living in poverty, even according to government figures.
So the challenge remains enormous. The Government are right to be ambitious about facing and rising to this challenge. Some steps that the Government could and should take include creating a child poverty unit to hold everyone across government to legally binding poverty reduction targets, and—as others have referenced—removing the benefit cap, which the National Education Union calculates would lift 300,000 children out of deep poverty, with minimal effects on work incentives.
In this country we pride ourselves on the fact that state school education is free. However, there is a cost for every child at school. Even with the changes in relation to the cost of school uniforms in England, families still face bills of over £300 a year for a primary school child’s uniform and over £400 a year for a secondary school pupil’s uniform. With other school-related costs—trips; curriculum resources in some subjects often leading to exclusion of the less well-off child; instrumental tuition, again, not being available to poorer children; and materials needed for home study and homework—families can find themselves paying over £1,000 a year per primary school child and approximately £2,300 for a secondary school pupil.
This has been ongoing for a very long time. I know that when I was at the National Union of Teachers, we worked with the Child Poverty Action Group on exactly this. Education is not free. These are not insignificant costs. While schools will seek to adopt a human rights- and poverty-sensitive approach, we all know that there is no spare cash in school budgets to provide any actual help. Many of us applaud the ambition to reduce child poverty—
Baroness Coffey (Con)
The noble Baroness is making an interesting point, but of course the pupil premium is a source of funding. I wonder whether, based on what she has just been saying, that schools should think more about taking an element of the pupil premium, so that those young children are not excluded.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for the intervention. I am sure that the pupil premium is being used as best as it possibly can be in every school. Often schools are having to top up their pupil premium because, frankly, there is not enough money in it, but I welcome the intervention.
Many of us applaud the ambition to reduce child poverty and clearly will do as much as we possibly can to monitor what I hope will be the Government’s success in this.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
I too join others in congratulating my noble friend Lady Lister on securing this debate. Like others, I express my great gratitude to her for the lifetime of campaigning that she has undertaken on this front and the great successes that she has seen delivered latterly. I thank the Government and, in particular, our Minister for her commitment and the great work that she has done. I say that in the knowledge that there are many other things she would like to do and is still not able to do even in government. The Government have made some important steps forward, but we need more. I will not repeat what others have said about the changes that have been implemented. I was particularly interested in the quality of school meals, and the need to extend those over a wider front, as well as the breakfast clubs. The noble Baroness, Lady Nargund, made a very powerful speech indeed, particularly from a health angle.
I sometimes wonder whether our definition of poverty is somewhat narrow, and this debate has ranged over a wider front. I too would like to say something more about children’s health and the worrying developments taking place with mental health. We really ought to broaden this debate to think about spiritual poverty as well as material poverty, because this poverty strategy is based primarily on the material rather than veering towards the spiritual. I feel—I guess, I sense—that some of the problems we are facing will take us into new areas. We need, if not new responses, to dust down some of the old responses and make sure that we have better communication with the children.
I became particularly concerned about children’s health after being on the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee. We went to Blackpool, which was quite an experience for me. My father told me I was conceived there, even though I am a Yorkshireman, and I had not been back to Blackpool for many years. It was a sorry sight, to some degree—I see people nodding in agreement—compared with what I had known of Blackpool before. We had intensive discussions with the public health officials there, looking particularly at children and the problems with housing: how the old hotels, or rather landladies’ places, have now been converted into residences for people on benefits. The scenario has completely changed compared with what I had seen previously.
Among the children, we found that there was a great difficulty with obesity. The public health officials were worried about obesity and how they could tackle it. I spent some time afterwards looking at the Government’s related policy on weight management and how we tackle people’s growing size. We have been doing this since 2008; the Labour Government introduced it then because they were worried about obesity coming along. I am sorry to say that our friends on the other side did little about it during the 14 years that they were in power. We found that, in spite of weighing and measuring children every year, the problems got worse. We now have a cohort of children in the UK who are probably the most obese in the whole of Europe. This links back to deprivation and poverty issues at home. But we also have a great problem with what we are feeding children at the moment: many of the people we would describe as being in poverty were children who were obese because of their diet—because of the cost of decent food, and so on.
The Government need to look again at why we are doing all this assessing and measuring, and getting all this data, but in fact are not taking many steps to do anything about it. What is the point in it? We get the data, but we do not do anything with it. The reason given to us in Blackpool was a shortage of public health resources: they just did not have the people available. I ask the Minister to explore whether, with the announcement we have made this week about AI and social media—that children will not be able to use technology in the same way as in the past—we are not going to miss a trick. AI, properly monitored and controlled, could possibly provide some assistance to children who have an issue with food, for example, 24 hours a day. They could refer to AI to find out what is good food for them and what is poor food. They could refer to it when they feel lonely—a lot of them felt lonely and neglected, and they were eating in those circumstances. Does the decision we have taken this week conflict with the opportunities to develop new resources, using AI, when we are not able to find the physical resources to meet the implementation of the worthy policy of weight measurement that we introduced back in 2008?
The Lord Bishop of Peterborough
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness for securing this important debate. At a time when the cost of living continues to rise and so many families struggle to meet their most basic needs, children often feel these burdens most strongly. Along with voluntary groups and other faith groups, many churches and Church schools are already working to support children most impacted by this crisis. Legislative change is needed but, like other noble Lords, I highlight and recognise the vital role that voluntary groups play in bringing people together, promoting hope and engaging in acts of care—all means of supporting children in poverty.
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, food is now the most common essential that low-income households are going without. Children living in poverty report exclusion from social activities and feel embarrassed to invite schoolmates to their home. Without a secure roof over their head or a hot meal on their dinner table, daily life becomes a struggle for survival, one that children are least equipped of all to bear. Child poverty, then, is not just an issue of economics but a crisis of human dignity and a moral challenge to the kind of society we wish to build.
Social stigma around experiences of poverty can cut whole families off from their support networks, yet it is these very community institutions which have such great potential to help lift families out of poverty and to provide a sense of belonging. I draw attention to one charity in my diocese which has served on the front lines of this poverty crisis for several years. Woodford Halse, near Daventry, is a large rural village with higher deprivation levels than its surrounding neighbours. Much of this need is hidden, but the head teacher of the local Church of England primary school became aware that children and families were struggling and began to find ways to help. This led to the forming of the Community Larder, situated within the school playground and providing affordable food to families struggling to make ends meet, along with ensuring that all children had a good breakfast each morning.
Crucially, this enterprise provides dignity to people by offering them choice. Rather than preparing food parcels, quality food is sold at a fraction of supermarket prices, through £5, £10 and £15 shops. The larder operates within a network of community support, receiving referrals from local schools, GP surgeries, health professionals and other agencies. The service, in distributing food, is essential for keeping families afloat, but so too are the personal connections it is able to foster. One service user found himself a single parent after the death of his wife from cancer. Left to care for his two young sons alone, he was struggling with both grief and the practical challenges of feeding his family. As volunteers helped him select fresh food from the larder, they discovered that he had never learned how to use these ingredients to prepare a meal, so they prepared simple recipe cards for him, providing the ingredients to make each meal, and over time, he and his sons began to cook together. This demonstrates that effective community support is about far more than providing bare resources; it is about helping people to rebuild confidence, develop life skills and regain hope during some of the most difficult periods of their lives.
Volunteer groups work hard to bring isolated families back into community life, but they find their efforts stifled by lack of investment in infrastructure. I strongly welcome the Government’s child poverty strategy, especially its acknowledgement of the connection between poverty and place. I ask the Government, recognising current budget restraints, to commit to long-term investment in community institutions. Without this, services such as Woodford Halse Community Larder are less able to play their part in helping to alleviate child poverty at grass roots.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for bringing this debate to your Lordships’ House. I begin by congratulating the Government on taking the historic decision to remove the two-child benefit limit. This is a bold and compassionate measure that will lift almost 500,000 children out of poverty. It is a policy for which many have argued for many years, but it took a Labour Government to deliver it. It demonstrates that poverty is not inevitable; it is a result of a political choice, and it can be reduced through political action. It should rightly be recognised as a significant step forward in the Government’s child poverty strategy. However, while we celebrate this progress, we must also confront the uncomfortable reality that pockets of child poverty remain in some of our communities. Ethnic minority children continue to face disproportionately high levels of poverty. Recent figures show that around 63% of Bangladeshi children and 52% of Pakistani children are growing up below the poverty line, compared with much lower rates among other children.
Children from these communities are also more likely to experience persistent and severe poverty, limiting their opportunity and affecting their health, educational attainment and life chances. These figures should concern us all. They represent not just statistics but children whose talent and aspiration are being constrained by circumstances beyond their control. A truly successful child poverty strategy must address these entrenched inequalities and ensure that every child, regardless of their ethnicity or background, has the opportunity to thrive.
I also wish to draw your Lordships’ attention to asylum-seeking and refugee children, mentioned earlier by my noble friend Lady Lister. Many of these children have already experienced unimaginable trauma before they arrive on our shores. Yet, having reached safety in the UK, many find themselves living in poverty and uncertainty. Too often, asylum seekers and their families are placed in unsuitable temporary accommodation, living for months or even years without stability. Children are frequently moved from one location to another, disrupting their education, friendships and support network. Many children face delays in accessing school places and other essential services. This is simply unacceptable in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. No child should grow up without a secure place to call home. No child should be denied the stability that is essential for healthy development. No child who has already suffered trauma should have their suffering compounded by poverty and inadequate housing.
The Government have taken an important step by lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, but our ambition must go further. We must ensure that children from ethnic minorities, refugee children and asylum-seeking children are not left behind. The measure of our society is how we treat the most vulnerable. In this day and age, no child from any community should be forced into poverty, insecurity or unstable accommodation. It is morally wrong and economically short-sighted. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government intend to ensure that every child, regardless of their background or circumstance, can share in the opportunity and prosperity of our nation.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for securing this debate and for her eloquent opening which, together with the contributions of other noble friends, identifies the appalling and, indeed, rising levels of child poverty in this, one of the richest countries in the world.
No one could disagree with the measures proposed in the government strategy paper and those raised during this debate. However, I will focus on another aspect of the problem, which my noble friend Lady Donaghy has touched on: the problem of low pay. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s UK Poverty 2026 report points out that 1.2 million children in poverty live in families with no adults in work. That is tragic, but not perhaps surprising among the grisly statistics on poverty. However, 1.7 million children in poverty live in families where at least one adult is in work. Worse still, 1.6 million children live in poverty in families where every adult in the family is in work.
This shows that, unemployment apart, workers do not earn enough to banish poverty. In this country, wages are, quite simply, too low. It must be remembered that, of our population of 67 million, over half—34 million—are in work, yet they do not earn enough to generate the demand that would grow the economy.
The latest ONS figures show that, for full-time workers, median earnings are £39,000 per annum gross and £31,700 net. This equates to a weekly take-home of about £610 per week. When part-timers are taken into account, the gross median falls to £31,000 and £26,000 per annum net. That equates to a weekly take-home of about £500. Since this is a median figure, one half of all employees—that is to say, 17 million—earn less than that figure each week. The median for each of the categories of women, disabled and ethnic minority workers is less still. The median self-employed worker, full or part-time, also earns less than the comparative median employee.
Low wages are the reason why the cost of living tops the concerns of working-class people in this country. The Government’s efforts to cap energy and housing costs have not so far succeeded, and, to a large extent, are caused by events outside UK control. However, wages can be increased. Increases to the national minimum wage are not insignificant, but the national minimum wage is not a minimum wage; it is a minimum hourly rate, and it does not enhance the wages of the great proportion of the workforce who earn something more than the national minimum wage. The value of real wages is much the same today as it was in 2008.
The only way to increase the real value of wages is widespread collective bargaining. That is the reason that the OECD, the IMF and the ILO all now advocate it, and why the EU’s 2022 adequate minimum wages directive requires member states with a level of collective bargaining coverage below 80% of the workforce to produce an action plan to achieve at least that level within five years. This is ironic, because in this country we had a level of collective bargaining coverage in excess of 80% from the end of the Second World War until the 1980s, when the Conservatives started to demolish it. Collective bargaining coverage is now around 25% of the workforce, and its absence for the remaining three-quarters of our workers is the principal explanation for low pay. That absence is also a key component of lack of demand in the economy and a major contributor to government expenditure on subsidising low wages. I recall that 32% of those on universal credit are actually in work.
I hope my noble friend the Minister will reconsider the Government’s opposition during the passage of the Employment Rights Act to a mechanism for the reintroduction of sector-wide collective bargaining across the economy, which I and some of my noble friends will be very happy to discuss with her. Such a measure would be a key component in the strategy for the relief of child poverty.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, the debate on this vitally important topic is so far almost indistinguishable from a debate held in this Chamber in April 2024. We have had a depressing litany of figures showing how children living in poverty suffer throughout their lives from disadvantage. In effect, we continue to raise the next generation which may have less hope for the future than perhaps a couple of years ago.
Today, the number of children suffering poverty is above 4 million, as we have heard—although there is a prediction that current mechanisms could reduce that figure by 500,000 by 2030. Research by the Poverty Strategy Commission suggests that £36 billion—a huge sum, but not that huge in the context of reducing poverty—efficiently invested in mechanisms to reduce child poverty could actually eliminate it altogether.
Despite the welcome lifting of the two-child benefit cap, the expansion of free school meals and investment in family hubs, I fear there are cuts to come. Current national concern about defence expenditure is likely to further stymie any mechanisms to relieve poverty conditions. This is a genuine dilemma that the Government have to face—daily. What are the priorities, where is the money to come from, and, I would add, how can improvements in the allocation of budgets to the various departments be implemented?
It is the latter issue that I feel is the most productive avenue at present. It is widely acknowledged by all political parties and commentators that the Government continue to operate on a silo basis. For whatever reasons, information is not efficiently shared across other government departments, there are contradictory policies which often cancel each out, and there is fierce competition on access to budgets leading to less than collaborative programming. There is also failure to implement fully programmes that focus on reducing childhood poverty due to, among other factors, change of Ministers and/or senior civil servants, overspends, adverse media comment or simply the failure to plan beyond an initial phase.
We also know that any meaningful social or welfare programme works if it is treated as a public health issue; that is, with a commitment from all relevant partners to work together on a clear strategy. That is, as I understand it, why the programme to reduce knife crime in Scotland largely succeeded. It is not so much a question of budgets and funding, important though they are, as agreeing short, medium and long-term plans between, in the case of childhood poverty, the education, health, social welfare, housing and transport departments and civic society and, above all, with leadership. This approach would not cost more but would be much more likely to save considerable sums. Ideas, plans, monitoring and evaluation would not fall in between the gaps that silo departmental structures inevitably create.
This is by no means an original suggestion. The problem, as always, will be to set such a system up and maintain it over a significant period. It is not impossible for many government departments to adopt this approach, but it would be a new way of working.
In my consistent experience, whether talking to humanitarian agencies about the proper delivery of relief assistance or the reorganisation of management in NGOs, the standard answer is “We are already doing it”, and I guess the Minister might tell us what efforts are being made to adopt this public health approach. But so far, it does not appear to be working. I hope the Minister might commit instead to a programme of clear, co-ordinated approaches to what is after all perhaps one of the major ills of our time: children growing up in poverty.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for securing this valuable debate. I welcome the Government’s child poverty strategy, breakfast clubs, free school meals for all children in households on universal credit and the abolition of the two-child benefit cap. However, such help is not permanent. We all remember that the party opposite opposed lifting the cap and the rise in the minimum wage, which would condemn millions more to poverty.
In a functioning democracy, no child should be condemned to live in poverty. The official total is that 13.4 million people, including 4 million children, live in poverty. Some 25.3 million people, including 7.7 million children, live below the minimum income standard. Too many are denied good food, housing and healthcare, and suffer from anxiety and insecurity from an early age. As a result, many do not attain their full educational, physical and mental-health development, or their employment and earnings potential. They are more likely to need support from health, welfare and public services throughout their life. Child poverty, over the life of the people involved, results in a loss of economic output of around £40 billion a year.
A recent study published in the Nature Human Behaviour journal shows that the effects of poverty alter human biology and accelerate ageing from a very young age. It also noted that adults who endured childhood economic deprivation continue to age at a significantly accelerated biological pace later in life, even if they achieve financial security decades after their initial childhood exposures. We now know that childhood poverty is a major cause of a declining healthy life expectancy, and there is a near 20-year gap between those in wealthy and deprived areas.
Millions every year are sacrificed to the gods of fiscal rules, who set absolutely no target for poverty reduction. Child poverty cannot be eradicated without addressing parental poverty, and parental poverty is deepening. In 1975, workers’ share of gross value added was 71.9%. After 50 years of economic growth and rises in the minimum wage, which the party opposite opposed, that has now declined to 59.3%. Since 2008, the average real wage has hardly changed. According to HMRC data, the annual median wage of payrolled employees is £31,524, and their take-home pay is £26,217. Try surviving on that.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that, for a socially acceptable minimum living standard, a couple with two children needs to earn £74,000 a year between them. Even with both parents working, the majority of families cannot hit that standard, and institutionalised poverty remains. Can the Minister say how the Government will increase workers’ share of the wealth created with their brains and brawn? What will they do to increase the median wage?
Trickle-down economics was clearly one of the biggest hoaxes of all time. The tax system hits the poorest the hardest. Wages are taxed at higher rates than capital gains and dividends. Paupers and the super-rich pay council tax at the same rate. Altogether, the poorest 20% of today’s population pays a higher proportion of its income in direct and indirect taxes than the richest 20%. Income tax personal allowances have been frozen at £12,570 a year since April 2021. If increased in line with inflation, the number would stand at £16,048 for 2026-27. As a result, somebody earning £17,000 a year, which is not a lot, will pay £696 in additional income tax this year alone. How is this aiding any fight against poverty? This will not eradicate child poverty or parental poverty. Can the Minister explain whether she thinks this policy is compatible with the Government’s child poverty strategy in any way whatever?
Poverty could be reduced by tackling the cost of living crisis, but there are no curbs on profiteering. In the last three years, the average rental cost has risen by around 28%. Unite scrutinised the accounts of 17,000 companies and found that profit margins since the pandemic had increased by 30% on average. Yes, social security benefits help, but they do not keep pace with inflation and, in any case, they are often measly. So can the Minister somehow persuade the Government to produce a joined-up strategy for reducing child poverty?
Lord John of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I add my name to the list of those commending my noble friend Lady Lister on bringing this debate? I also welcome the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, because the nature of the issue of child poverty is such that we should be striving for cross-party consensus on it. It is in our national interest. I have said before in a debate in this House that a Labour Government are about nothing if they are not about tackling child poverty. So it is welcome to be able to reflect again on what the Government have achieved so far and to think about what else needs to be done.
It is important to acknowledge, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned at the outset, that, for the first time since 2010, we have a child poverty strategy, which has at its heart the three pillars of boosting family incomes, driving down the cost of essentials and increasing local support. While it does not solve all problems, I was pleased to support the ending of the two-child benefit cap, which came into effect in April. It is a singularly significant measure, which will help us reach that target of lifting over 500,000 children out of poverty. In fact, there is an impressive list of measures, from raising the national minimum wage to the introduction of school breakfast clubs and extending free school meals, which will all play a part in the mission of reducing the inequalities caused by poverty.
I want to mention the Milburn review on young people and work, as the recommendations from that review will massively improve the life chances and outcomes for young people who otherwise risk being left behind.
When we last debated child poverty in the context of lifting the benefits cap, I spoke about two policies that we introduced in Southwark: universal, free healthy school meals for all primary school children, initially as a response to childhood obesity—my noble friend Lord Brooke should note—and free swimming pool and gym use for all residents. Both of those were specifically aimed at breaking down barriers and ensuring that young people have the best start in life.
I also mention, by way of our greatest hits, our Southwark scholarship programme, which each year paid the tuition fees of a dozen academically gifted young people from low-income households, and the Nest, our mental health hub for children and young people, which aimed to ensure that 100% of those who needed mental health support received it in a timely manner—against the then Government’s target of 35%.
All these policies, in their own way, were aimed at reducing inequality and ensuring that a child’s background or poverty did not determine their path in life. But the reality is that these programmes are possible only because of the economic growth that Southwark achieved over that period, which meant that, although we were losing central government funding, we boosted our income by over £500 million over 10 years, through increased council tax and business rates, the new homes bonus and Section 106 contributions, not to mention the 46,000 more Southwark residents who found work. We all know that the greatest measure that any Government can take to tackle poverty and reduce the problems that accompany it is helping people into work. It is the easiest solution, but the greatest challenge.
Above all other measures and actions that this Government take during this Parliament to tackle child poverty, however, I urge them to place economic growth as the absolutely central mission—
Lord John of Southwark (Lab)
Sorry, I was not expecting that cheer.
We have spoken about it over the past two years, and we have seen some modest growth, but we have to be honest that it is not enough. We must show renewed urgency in demonstrating that the UK is open for business and is the genuine incubator for growth. If we can do that, we can be confident that this Labour Government are the Government who will end the scourge of child poverty, perhaps for a generation and beyond.
Baroness Teather (LD)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on securing this debate. I am a long-standing fan of the noble Baroness. I worked with her quite a lot when I was a Member of the other place. I have huge admiration for her fearless and courageous advocacy on behalf of, often, children who are otherwise forgotten. I have collaborated with her on many, many issues over many, many years.
It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to respond to this debate today on behalf of the Lib Dem Benches, and to have an opportunity to debate with the Minister, who, I recognise, has very deep knowledge and commitment in this area. This is an issue that I feel very passionately about. It is the reason why I made my maiden speech on the issue of child poverty just a few months ago.
There are a number of us here who have, in government, attempted to tackle child poverty. The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, outed herself in her early remarks, and I know she mentioned the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott. When I made my maiden speech, I spoke about the challenges of wrangling a child-poverty strategy across government as being a cross between cat wrangling and giving birth, and requiring an equally miraculous level of commitment to actually bring that to fruition.
The range of contributions today—highly knowledgeable contributions covering such a wide variety of topics—has brought that to the fore. We have heard many noble Lords speak about the moral imperative to tackle this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Kestenbaum, spoke about the role of schools. Language came up, and tone was mentioned by a number of noble Lords. The importance of childcare was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Smith of Llanfaes. Free school meals was an issue raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, and I will return to that in a minute.
A number of noble Lords spoke about how child poverty falls disproportionately on a number of different groups. The noble Lord, Lord Sahota, spoke about ethnic minorities and asylum-seeking families. The issue of families—single-parent families and families that have a disability—was raised by others. The noble Baroness, Lady Paul, spoke passionately about boys and how boys often fare least well. It was a very welcome contribution, I thought, to this debate today.
The noble Lord, Lord Babudu, spoke about the role of private investment, and a number of noble Lords spoke about health from different perspectives. The noble Baroness, Lady Nargund, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, spoke about mental health and obesity; the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, spoke about the impact on ageing. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, spoke about the multifaceted nature of poverty, and she was one of a number of noble Lords who raised the issue of low pay. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, spoke about the cost of education, which is something I want to pick up in a moment.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough spoke about rural poverty, which, again, I think is often missed out from this debate, where we focus particularly on urban areas. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, spoke about the need for an integrated approach and integrated programmes. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, talked about the scale of the challenge, and the noble Lord, Lord John of Southwark, opened his remarks by speaking about the need for some cross-party consensus. I suppose I will kick off there, on the need for cross-party consensus.
I hope the Minister finds me a kind of encourager. I have some areas where I want to say I would like the Government to go further. However, as I said, having had the experience of wrangling a child poverty strategy, I am hugely sympathetic to the challenge involved, so I hope that she will find me an encourager on these issues. I want to begin, like other noble Lords, by acknowledging progress and welcome facets in the child poverty strategy: the tone, for example, as well as involving families who experience poverty. That is hugely important and I want to return to that at the end. I gave my maiden speech in the debate on the Bill to abolish the two-child limit in universal credit, which is hugely welcome, and for which Lib Dems have been arguing for some time. Some 450,000 children will be lifted out of poverty as a result of that.
However, while the child poverty strategy is a welcome direction, it is not an adequate destination. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that even after the measures in the child poverty strategy, the DWP’s own forecast suggests that 4 million children will still be in poverty in 2029-30. There is some disagreement about the number of children who will be lifted out of poverty as a result of the strategy—the Resolution Foundation suggests that it is probably around 300,000—but, either way, it is not enough to celebrate slowing this rise; the country needs to reverse it. There is a question about what we do from a big-picture perspective, there are areas where I hope we might go further and some other areas where I hope the child poverty strategy might be brought into conversation with wider cross-government work, where the child poverty strategy may be the key to our thinking about what else we need to do as a nation.
It seems to me that the single biggest hole in the strategy is that there are no binding targets. Whatever you might think about Scotland’s delivery, in Scotland the statutory child poverty targets have provided a framework to hold Ministers to account. My first question to the Minister is therefore: why are there no binding targets? Are the Government willing to be held to account on this, and will they think again?
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, spoke about a need for a human rights approach. I would argue that child rights impact assessments would be hugely helpful, for example, in helping us understand what is happening.
A number of noble Lords spoke about the benefit cap. I had long-standing prior form on the benefit cap in making myself distinctly unpopular in government. I was not sure whether you are supposed to admit to when you lose battles in government, but the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, began by speaking about battles that she lost in government, and I think it was pretty on the record that I lost that one. I use this opportunity to urge the Government to think again on the benefit cap; otherwise, the good work that has been done with the reversal of the two-child limit in universal credit risks being undone. At the very least, we could lift the rate and raise it in line with inflation.
I just want to talk about free school meals. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester devoted all his speech to this topic, and it was a very welcome and informed contribution. I very much welcome the expansion of free school meals to all families on universal credit, but, again, underregistration risks leaving people behind. The September expansion is a perfect moment to switch to a national opt-out or auto-enrolment system using data the Government already hold—for example, the warm home discount. So my next question to the Minister is: will they think again and introduce a national auto-enrolment alongside this September’s rollout so that no eligible child slips through the cracks?
The child poverty strategy has some measures around school uniform, but I would argue again that we could go further; we could agree a cap on the cost of school uniform, which would make such a difference to so many families.
Lastly, as I read the child poverty strategy, the thing that occurred to me most of all was how so many of these topics feel very similar to the things that we were trying to address in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and yet we are facing into a very different world. I suppose it left me a little nervous about whether the child poverty strategy is being brought into conversation with the big strategies and challenges that as a country we are facing now, around food security, the impact of global conflict and the impact of climate change. All these are going to fall disproportionately on the poorest families, and my view is that it is their perspective that might hold the key to helping us to understand how we as a nation might tackle those bigger challenges. I urge the Government to use what they have already done in their strategy, bringing in the perspectives of those affected by poverty into conversation with a much wider strategy.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, I, also, thank the noble Lady Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for this important debate today. I think we all agree that eliminating child poverty is an important aim. I went into education 25 years ago because I wanted to take forward the education approaches that are most effective with the most disadvantaged children, so I know how much work already goes on in all stages of education to support children in poverty. It was good to hear the noble Lord, Lord Kestenbaum, recognize this.
I have studied the Government’s child poverty strategy and its publications on deep material poverty. The first thing I notice is how hard it is to measure child poverty. Much effort has gone into the new measure. It gets closer than the relative measure to children’s actual experience. Do they have three meals a day, fresh fruit and vegetables, somewhere to do homework, games, toys, and outdoor equipment? Do they live in decent and warm housing? Can they get around on public transport? Can their families cope with an unexpected bill?
First, the measure suggests that there are just over 2 million children in deep material poverty. That is, of course, a concerning figure, but, startlingly, it correlates poorly with the Government’s preferred poverty measure of having less than 60% of median household income after housing costs. More than 70% of children in families below the 60% line are not in deep material poverty and, conversely, more than 40% of the children in deep material poverty are not in households falling below the 60% threshold. This clearly needs more examination and suggests that it is time to retire that arbitrary 60% number. It is good for political point-scoring, but is not very helpful for actual children and their lives.
We know the main risk factors, which the strategy acknowledges. Work, family structure, family size and geography all matter, and there are some striking ethnic disparities. All this is acknowledged, yet so much is ignored or glossed over in the strategy, and I will follow on from the points made by my noble friend Lady Coffey and several others.
First, I must talk about fatherlessness. I am not denigrating single mothers, most of whom make every effort for their children. Yet it is undeniably the case that, on average, children who do not live with their father have worse life outcomes on many fronts. It was good to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Paul of Shepherd’s Bush, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, touch on this. More than half of children are now born outside marriage. Most have cohabiting parents when they are born, but cohabitation is less stable than marriage, so too few children are growing up with both natural parents, and it is obviously unrealistic to believe that state support, however good, can entirely compensate for a parent-shaped gap in a child’s life. There are countries that have significant incentives for parents to marry and remain in stable unions. We have disincentives in tax, welfare and social housing, so it is worrying that the strategy does not even mention marriage, let alone set out policies to reverse a damaging social trend that is directly responsible for a lot of child poverty.
The strategy skates fairly lightly past at least 500,000 children—although published estimates vary—in families that have no recourse to public funds. Almost certainly, these children make up a hefty slice of the 2.1 million in deep material poverty. Some families will get leave to remain, in which case the full range of benefits and support will become available to them, and some will not and will leave. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Sahota, noted, these children’s interests are surely best served by resolving their cases swiftly. It is none the less a puzzlingly large number of children affected.
Linked to this, there is no mention of cultural differences that contribute to making some ethnic groups much heavier users of welfare than others and making their children more likely to be poor. Relatively few women of Somali origin work. Estimates range from 10% to 24% compared with over 70% of white women. Bangladeshi and Pakistani women are also far less likely to be earning. For balance, I point out that Haredi Jewish households are also particularly likely to depend on benefits. The strategy is silent on a real issue of fairness. Is it reasonable to expect families where both parents work to provide for their children to pay taxes to support families where at least one parent may be choosing not to? If not, how will the Government adjust the relevant incentives?
Improving parent skills should be a much bigger piece of the jigsaw. The labour market values mathematical competence, so improving numeracy helps. For many families in poverty from immigrant backgrounds, it would be hard for the adults to earn a decent wage until they speak better English. Many parents who have grown up in countries with more limited education systems will need some good vocational education to help them move beyond insecure casual work. As the noble Lord, Lord John of Southwark, noted in his excellent speech, a child poverty strategy is ultimately self-defeating if it ushers children of poorer families into adult lives of worklessness and dependency. Making sure that these children move from education into proper jobs and stay in sustained employment is critical.
I do not want to dismiss the Government’s measures, but I think I have shown where the real differences lie between these Benches and the Government. Too many current policies are sticking plasters to treat symptoms, not cures or preventive measures. They do not solve the underlying problems—the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, made some important points here. In essence, child poverty arises when a child’s parents cannot or do not earn enough to provide for their child. Of course, there will always be a small proportion of families who, for good reason, will not be able to achieve this, but most could. By definition, anyone over 21 working full-time on the national minimum wage will be earning 60% of national median income. Therefore, there are an awful lot of children in families that do not have the equivalent of even one full-time wage coming in.
If we are serious about eliminating child poverty, we need to focus more on better skills and a growing economy that generates better jobs and higher real wages, plus the kinds of support that help families become more secure and independent—such as the debt advice service mentioned by my noble friend Lady Coffey and the parenting service described by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft—I think I was the first person to talk publicly about the problem of children starting school in nappies, almost a decade ago during my time at Ofsted.
Economic growth is the most powerful lever to reduce poverty, but, sadly, the Government’s current policies are increasing the welfare burden while disincentivising work for an increasing proportion of the population—which in turn constrains economic growth and hence the capacity to fund benefits. I warn the Government here. The social contract that underpins the welfare system requires mutual trust and cohesion, which is more than a little frayed, especially in relation to disability-linked benefits for adults and children. The collective willingness to fund a comprehensive welfare system depends on those paying having confidence that all but a small minority will contribute to the system through most of their working lives, that claims will be genuine and that decision-makers will be effective in gatekeeping the system to prevent abuses.
I remind noble Lords that the benefits bill this year will be about £330 billion, which is around £11,000 per household. Since more than half of households are now net recipients of benefits, the annual bill paid by the minority of households who make a net contribution is higher still. We simply cannot afford fraud. So I was not reassured by the reply from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, to a recent Written Question asked by my noble friend Lady Coffey about the number of prosecutions for benefits fraud since July 2024. All it said was:
“The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost”.
I will finish by asking the Minister four questions. Will the Government set clear targets for moving families that are dependent on benefits towards independence, including parental employment rates and earnings progression, and report regularly against these? Will the Government set targets for successful labour market entry and continuing employment for all young people who grow up in benefit-dependent households and report regularly against them? Will the Government commit to publishing regular comprehensive information about children and families with no recourse to public funds, including their nationalities, how and when they came to Britain, how they are being housed and helped, at what cost, and how their temporary status is being resolved? And linked to my earlier point, will the Government commit to publishing regular updates on the incidence of benefit fraud, on the perpetrators and on the cost to the taxpayer, together with reporting on the effectiveness of steps that are being taken to deter and minimise fraud?
I will end by thanking everyone who has spoken today for recognising that there is a moral imperative here to do what is right for all our children and, above all, to do what is right for them in the long term, as well as in the short term, so that children live the best lives they can for themselves and as parents in their turn.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, let me add my words of appreciation to my noble friend Lady Lister, who must at this point be blushing from the compliments showered upon her, but they are very well deserved. I am thrilled that she got this debate and introduced it so well. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken and for the great encouragement from around the Chamber, especially from my new encourager on the Lib Dem Front Bench, the noble Baroness, Lady Teather, whom I welcome to the Front Bench. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, to her role on the Front Bench, and I look forward to taking issue with her later.
As we have heard, there are 4 million children in poverty in the UK. That is 700,000 more than there were in 2010. Almost 2 million children are in deep material poverty—a term I will come back to—lacking even the most basic essentials like a warm home or healthy food. We know that growing up in poverty has a devastating impact on children and their prospects. It affects their attainment at school, their future earnings, and their mental and physical health. They are more likely to grow up to become NEETs. Right now, we have more than 1 million young people not in education, employment or training. That is what happens when funding for services is cut, when wages flatline, and when people are trapped in the system.
As my noble friend Lord Kestenbaum said, this is indeed the fight of our lives. We have to break this link between a child’s background and their future success. I should digress for a moment. In 2000, I was running a charity working with single parents when Gordon Brown, then the Chancellor, hired me to work for him to advise on child poverty and how we tackled that, on Sure Start and on all the work that that Labour Government did. I was hugely proud to be part of that effort, so to be back here now with another child poverty strategy and a Government committed to it is something which I am hugely privileged to be part of. It is the fight of our lives, and we have to intend it or it will not happen.
The consequences of poverty impose heavy costs on the taxpayer through lost productivity and added pressure on public services. That goes to questions of economic growth and economic success—tackling poverty is also vital for our economy, as well as for the lives and opportunities of our children. This Government are correcting course. We want every child to have the chance to fulfil their potential—hence our child poverty strategy, which will lift 550,000 children out of poverty, the largest expected reduction in child poverty in a single Parliament. We are now focused on delivering the commitments in the strategy, monitoring its impact and the trajectory of poverty to ensure we build momentum and sustain our progress. I shall try to answer the very many questions, and when I fail, I will write and answer the ones I do not get to, with apologies ahead of time.
Let me start with the worries about the Child Poverty Unit, which I hope I can assuage. The unit has moved to the DWP, as the strategy set out that it would do. Many of the officials are the same officials who worked there right the way through. They have retained the same strong relationships that help deliver the strategy inside and outside government. We have some brilliant officials working on this and I really enjoy working with them. We also have the interministerial group chaired jointly by the DWP and the DfE, which met formally for the first time yesterday, involving 13 government departments. We are determined to make sure through this that child poverty remains a priority across government. I want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, whether or not I can get all the way with her, that that kind of cross-government working is the only way we are going to make this work. I will read her words of wisdom again carefully when I come to read Hansard, but she pushes us in a really important direction.
My noble friends Lady Lister and Lady Donaghy asked whether I could share any information about the baseline report ahead of time. I regret to say to my noble friend Lady Donaghy that my petticoat must stay firmly where it is. I am sorry that I cannot offer any spoilers at this stage, but it is due out this summer, so they will not have too long to wait.
My noble friend Lord Kestenbaum raised questions about education, which I will come to in a moment. I will touch briefly on targets, raised by my noble friends Lord Babudu and Lady Lister, the noble Baroness, Lady Teather, and others. I think the most important thing is that what we are doing is visible. We already have a statutory duty to publish poverty statistics annually. As well as that, we are going to hold ourselves to account through the monitoring and evaluation arrangements put in place from this year and in future years, so the progress we make is transparent for all—and if we fail to make progress, that too is transparent for all. I think that will make the big difference.
My noble friend Lady Lister asked about migrant children, raised also by the noble Baroness, Lady Teather, and, in a rather different way, by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. Within the immigration system, the Home Office determines eligibility for benefits, and most migrants with temporary visas cannot access the benefits system. Access to public funds and benefits is usually at the point of settlement, although the Home Office, as has been noted, is consulting on changing the rules on that and will respond in due course. Migrant children who are subject to the no recourse to public funds condition have access to initiatives in place across the UK to support disadvantaged children, including free school meals, subject to certain eligibility thresholds, and support for children with special educational needs or disabilities. We are also looking to develop our understanding of that and its impacts for new questions in the Family Resources Survey.
Free school meals were raised by many noble Lords and Baronesses across the debate. Extending free school meals to all children in households on universal credit is a really significant step in tackling child poverty. I recognise the desire always to go further, but let us not just bank this and move on; let us look at this and see what a significant step it is. This expansion will lift around 100,000 children out of poverty and put money back into the pockets of families who need it most. We all know that children who are not hungry are more likely to attend school, to get better results and to improve their long-term life chances. That is one of my answers to the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, about who should get them and who should not.
I am afraid I will not be able to do all that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester would like, but I can tell him that the DfE is updating the eligibility checking system, which will make it easier for local authorities and schools to check whether children are eligible for free school meals and to ensure they receive a healthy, nutritious meal during the school day. I take his point about changes in the system, but local authorities are already taking innovative approaches to maximising take-up. For example, Sheffield runs an annual data-matching exercise using pupil records and housing benefit data to identify eligible children, which it can justify under its duty to support eligible children. I will undertake to make sure that the right reverend Prelate’s remarks on this are shared with my colleagues in the Department for Education, because he gave a lot of attention to it. I will make sure it is looked at carefully.
On the matter of free school meals, as a word to my noble friend Lord Brooke, we propose to make changes related to increasing fibre, reducing sugar and further restricting foods higher in fat, sugar and salt in free school meals, in line with the nutritional advice set by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition.
The question of employment was raised repeatedly, and it is incredibly important. It is one of the places I take issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, who mischaracterised the child poverty strategy as being about trying to get people to stay on benefits. I hope I have made clear that growing up in poverty makes children less likely to be in work, get skills and achieve as adults, so our job is to make sure we help lift them out of poverty to give them the best chance. We also want to get parents into work, so our new jobs and careers service will give tailored employment support, taking into account their circumstances, to get them into work.
Although parental employment is high, we are also aware that almost three-quarters of children in poverty live in working households. My noble friends Lord Hendy and Lord Sikka raised the question of in-work poverty and low wages. The Government are clear: work should be a route out of poverty. That is why the strategy takes action to support people into work and to improve incomes for working families. We have increased the national living wage, and I should pause to pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Donaghy for all that she did in making sure that we had a national minimum wage in the first place—another achievement of hers but also of a previous Labour Government. We will also look to increase access to affordable childcare so that more parents can take up and progress in employment; I will come back to that if time permits. We are improving universal credit to make sure that families keep more of what they earn, including reducing deductions, and we have increased the basic rate for the first time, but we are also tackling the cost of essentials.
We are doing a lot to invest in childcare. We are investing £82 million in over 600 school-based nurseries, creating 11,000 new places by September next year. For those on universal credit, we are improving the process for claiming support for childcare costs, removing cost caps so parents can get more money if they have more than two children; and there is a lot more out there for supporting families.
I turn to some of the questions that have been asked. The subject of education was raised by a number of colleagues, including my noble friends Lord Kestenbaum and Lady Blower. On the point about inspiring teachers, when my noble friend Lord Kestenbaum said that, I bet that every one of us thought for a moment of an inspiring teacher from our childhoods. I certainly think of Miss Scriven and Mrs Scriven—both in my school but, weirdly, unrelated—both of whom inspired me. I pay tribute to all those who are teaching now and to organisations like Teach First, bringing people into teaching to inspire the children so that we have people there enabling them to have a future.
Child poverty impacts all aspects of education. As I said, children who are hungry or living in unsuitable accommodation struggle to learn, but the fact is that schools also end up diverting energy and time to dealing with hardship rather than just teaching children. Again, getting the child poverty strategy right can help to free that up.
I am advised there are 4,654 more teachers—approximately—in 2025-26 than a year earlier, and our delivery plan was published in February to show that we are setting out to recruit 6,500 teachers in secondary and further education over the course of this Parliament.
My noble friend Lady Nargund made some important points about health inequalities. I cannot respond to all of them, but I will pick them up and talk to my noble friend Lady Merron, who is sitting next to me, about these matters from a health perspective.
In our 10-year health plan, we are expanding mental health support teams to cover all schools by 2029, an issue raised by my noble friend Lord Brooke. We are increasing the value of Healthy Start vouchers so that more families can buy the nutritious food they need. We have detailed the rollout of a supervised toothbrushing programme; it is shocking that tooth decay is the most common reason why children are admitted to hospital. Through the 10-year health plan, we are committed to expanding funding for healthy babies to cover all areas over the next decade.
A number of noble Lords asked about homelessness and housing. Homelessness levels are far too high, and we recognise the devastating impact that has on children’s lives, so we are taking action across the system to prevent homelessness and support families who are affected. We are investing £1 billion this year in homelessness and rough sleeping services, alongside further funding for local authorities to prevent families entering temporary accommodation in the first place. We are also making the biggest investment in social and affordable housing in a generation, alongside measures such as the Renters’ Rights Act to strengthen security for tenants and help protect families from losing their homes.
I was asked about the local housing allowance. The Government had to take difficult decisions at the Autumn Budget and prioritise measures that had the biggest impact on reducing child poverty, such as the removal of the two-child limit. It is difficult, because we already spend around £37 billion a year on housing support, including some £13 billion in the private rented sector. However, we are doing the most important thing to attack the gaps in and levels of rents, which is to address the underlying problem of a lack housing supply. That is why £39 billion is being invested in the Social and Affordable Homes Programme.
We continue to support households that are struggling with housing payments, through the Crisis and Resilience Fund housing payments in England and discretionary housing payments in Scotland and Wales. We also need to address the quality of homes, an issue raised by my noble friend Lady Nargund and others. The Government are introducing stronger standards and protection, including Awaab’s law, to tackle serious hazards, putting in new electrical safety regulations and a future decent homes standard.
My noble friend Lady Nargund raised the terrible situation of the death of children linked to temporary accommodation. The death of any child is devastating, and it is imperative that we prevent deaths caused by unsuitable accommodation or gaps in care. So we are taking a cross-government approach to strengthen protections and improve the experience of families in temporary accommodation, including eliminating the use of B&Bs for families except in emergencies. We are acting to prevent harm by introducing proactive health outreach for families, improving data through a new clinical code for children in temporary accommodation and ending the practice of discharging newborns into unsuitable housing.
My noble friend Lord Brooke raised questions around children and obesity. There are complex issues around obesity and poverty, as I know he understands very well. We are taking decisive action on the crisis of childhood obesity. We are restricting the advertising of junk food; we have consulted on proposals to ban the sale of high-caffeine drinks to children; and we have given local councils stronger powers to limit schoolchildren’s access to fast food. Defra is also taking important steps to address the whole issue of food, including developing good food neighbourhoods and working with local authorities to support community-led initiatives such as food clubs, community kitchens and nutrition programmes. I will return to the points raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough in a moment.
I was pleased that my noble friend Lady Paul raised the question of boys, and disadvantaged boys in particular. I recently attended an interministerial group chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister on the question of men and boys. We were talking about this very issue. The evidence about school attainment and the outcomes for boys is shocking. It will continue to be a focus in how the Government consider groups at particular risk of poverty, and their outcomes in childhood and later life. I will share my noble friend’s comments on this matter with my right honourable friend.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the benefit cap, including my noble friends Lord Babudu and Lady Lister, and the noble Baroness, Lady Teather. The Government believe that, where possible, it is in the interests of children to be in working households. Being in work substantially reduces the chance of poverty. The poverty rate of children living in households where all adults work is 16%, compared with 60% for children in households where no adults work. The benefit cap limits the total amount of benefits a working-age household can receive. But people who are working and earning at least £881 a month are exempt from the benefit cap, and there is also protection for the most vulnerable, as those in receipt of care or disability benefits are exempt from the cap. I know my noble friend Lady Lister knows that there is a statutory obligation to review the levels of the cap at least once every five years. They were last reviewed in November 2022 and, as such, they will have to be reviewed by November 2027. That will happen at a time the Secretary of State believes appropriate, but by that date.
The question was raised about partnerships and working with voluntary organisations. The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, gave a really interesting example. I would be grateful if she would let me have some more information about the charity: I like the sound of what was being described there. The point that she and others made—about the importance of children arriving at school at least ready to learn, or ready to engage with other children—is incredibly important. It is one of the things that I found so important when we developed Sure Start. The question of how to engage families is really important. In the Sure Start days, it was the very universality that reduced the stigma and therefore made it easier to get engagement. You could go along for a dental check-up and while you were there, other things could get picked up. But we are doing really important work with Best Start Family Hubs, which are reaching out, and that will be a way in which we develop this in the future.
We also recognise more broadly the voluntary and charitable work done by so many charities, and we are, for example, establishing the £500 million better futures fund, and the world’s largest social outcomes fund—a point raised by my noble friend Lord John—to support vulnerable children and families, and unlock up to £1 billion in total funding through collaboration with charities.
I was grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough for describing what was happening at the Woodford Halse Community Larder. I recognise some of that: I visited some community larders, which are wonderful. I loved her point about the importance of dignity. This is about human dignity and attacking poverty is fundamentally about human dignity. On Monday I was invited by another bishop to visit a brilliant charity in Grimsby working with local, very disadvantaged families, supporting children and young people in a brilliant way. I found it inspiring and I was very pleased to hear more about it. I am always interested to hear examples of good practice, so I encourage anyone to let me have them. I am always happy to go and visit projects, so if noble Lords have things they would like me to go and visit, do please get in touch.
We are looking forward to engaging continually as we go forward. We had wonderful engagements with voluntary, community and faith organisations in developing the strategy, and those will carry on. I know that my honourable friend the Minister for Employment was very grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester for bringing together a multi-faith group to meet her. That is an engagement she looks forward to carrying on.
The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, raised questions about metrics. I recognise that these are Labour debates, so I thank her for taking the time to come and do this, especially late on a Thursday afternoon. She and the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, raised questions about metrics. First, I must say to the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, that “relative low income” is not some random measure that this Government came up with. It is the internationally recognised measure of poverty which reflects changing living standards over time. The reason we put in more than one measure is to get a rounded view, so we are going to use that. But deep material poverty is a new measure which is based on material deprivation, and together they will help give us a more rounded picture of what poverty looks like in the UK.
The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, also raised the issue of debt. The Best Start Family Hubs are designed to be a gateway to the full range of support that families need. Every hub will connect families to debt advice where it is needed, and that is something that can be really important.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, raised the question of how we will work with Wales. We are committed to continued collaboration with the devolved Governments to tackle child poverty across the UK. Specifically, we are committed to making sure that the UK-wide strategy complements their efforts and does not detract from their own work on poverty reduction. I look forward to working with the noble Baroness’s colleagues on this matter.
My noble friend Lord Babudu asked about the commencement of the socioeconomic duty. This Government are committed to ensuring that everyone can thrive, no matter their background, and we will commence the socioeconomic duty on public bodies soon.
My noble friend Lord John made some important points about NEETs. We commissioned Alan Milburn’s report; we welcome it, and we are already acting, and are going to act even more strongly, on it. I welcome my noble friend’s points about growth. As a Government, we are completely committed to expanding growth. However, I would also say that growth in itself does not mean that child poverty will improve. We have to be determined to tackle it, and this Government are determined to tackle it wherever we find it, including in ethnic minority families—an important point that was raised by my noble friend Lord Sahota.
I am running out of time, so I simply want to say that this Government are determined to break down barriers to opportunity, deliver growth and raise living standards. We will invest in children and families because we believe in the value of every person and the contribution that they can make to society. Every pound we spend lifting children out of poverty invests in the future health, education and social security system of this country. We can save children from the consequences of poverty. A good childhood is in all our interests, and we owe it to the children of our country to give them the best possible start in life.
I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to this most important of subjects. It is not only the fight of our lives but a source of, and an opportunity for, real hope for the future. Let us work together to do it.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I do not know where to start. It has been a fantastic debate, and I thank all noble Lords. I thank my noble friend, and I echo the very positive things that have been said about her. I cannot do justice to everything that has been said, but I am grateful for the passion, commitment and knowledge that people have brought to the debate. As I say, I cannot do justice to it all, but the noble Baroness, Lady Teather, who I think of as my noble friend, has done a very good job of summarising some of what has been said, as has my noble friend the Minister.
I echo what my noble friend the Minister said about the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. I appreciate the fact that she has made the time to attend and contribute, although she will not expect me to agree with much of what she said. On the question of what happened during Covid, I take her point. It had something to do with the extra £20 that was paid on universal credit. From the evidence given to the Covid inquiry, I gather that the noble Baroness herself said that she pushed for an increase in universal credit. I welcome that; it was needed. I very much welcome what the noble Baroness said about debt advice services. She spoke about something that I should have mentioned: the importance of advice services more generally. We think of groups such as the Trussell Trust as providing food banks, but a lot of their work is providing advice. I thank the noble Baroness for that contribution.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester was one of many people who emphasised the importance of education from different perspectives—free school meals, teachers, and so forth—as did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough, the noble Baronesses, Lady Wheatcroft and Lady Teather, and my noble friends Lord Kestenbaum, Lady Paul, Lady Donaghy, Lady Blower, Lord Brooke and Lord John. Education clearly came up in lots of different ways, so its importance was recognised.
I very much appreciate the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, bringing her personal experience to bear. We talk about lived experience, but we forget that there may be people on these Benches who have that lived experience and can bring it to our debates, and that is really important. I thank her too for mentioning the Scottish child payment and what is happening in Wales. Sometimes in England, we do not do enough to listen to what is happening in Wales and Scotland and what we can learn from that. A children’s rights perspective is certainly something that we can learn from experience in Wales.
My noble friend Lord Babudu mentioned the socioeconomic duty—soon. “Soon” is one of those wonderful government words, is it not? What does it mean? Let us hope it means what we would all like it to mean. It is not long until the Summer Recess, so I hope it means before then.
As well as education, a number of noble Lords made important points about health and public health. My noble friends Lady Nargund, Lord Brooke, Lord Sikka and the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, all referred to health in different ways. The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, talked about the politics of poverty of aspiration. A lot of people said, “Yes, yes”, but I absolutely take the point. Children have lost aspiration. They have tried. It is not that they start with a lack of aspiration; it is just drummed out of them. They keep facing these hurdles, which they cannot get across because of all the different factors against them. Sometimes there is a danger that we think of aspiration as a kind of individual thing.
That is probably my main difference with the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, because she is coming at it very much from the perspective of individual responsibility, family and so forth, whereas I see poverty as a structural issue: I think it is the structures of society that are contributing to that. So there is a fundamental difference there, but I appreciate her contribution to the debate.
I am glad to say that a number of noble Lords supported what I said about the benefit cap. My noble friend said that it has to be reviewed next year. But, really, between this year and next year, families are suffering. I really hope it is not just the kind of review that looks at this and thinks, “Perhaps we should put it up this year”. What I am asking for is a fundamental review of the policy towards the thresholds, rather than simply the annual review. The annual review does not mean you cannot look at it more frequently than every five years.
A number of noble Lords made the important point about targets. I am glad that a number brought up families with no recourse to public funds from different perspectives. This group is suffering very real poverty.
A number of noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Donaghy, Lord Hendy and Lord Sikka, brought up the problem of in-work poverty. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough and others emphasised the importance of the contribution voluntary groups can make. That, importantly, links in with advice services as well.
The noble Baroness, Lady Teather, made an important point about listening. People in poverty may be able to help us think about some of the big challenges we face as a society, and that is forgotten.
What it comes down to is something a number of noble Lords mentioned: we are talking about political choices, and a moral imperative underlies them. A number of people talked about how we are in the fight of our lives—it is not our lives but the lives of children in poverty. As a number of people have said, we must always remember that they lie behind those statistics. More than one noble Lord made the point that we are talking about the kind of society in which we want to live.
I hope that what has been said today, which has been immensely valuable, will be helpful to the child poverty team or unit—whatever it is now called—and to the Government. I quite like this label of being an “encourager”: if the noble Baroness does not mind, I might take that on board and be my noble friend the Minister’s encourager. I am not sure she needs much encouragement, but perhaps she needs support. I hope that what has been said today will give her the support that she and the rest of the Government need. With that, I thank everyone very much for giving up their afternoon and for their immense contribution to the debate.