Child Poverty

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.