Household Support Fund: Children’s Bed Poverty

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point of tackling poverty not over one year but over several years. She will know that we will spend £276 billion through the welfare system in the coming year, 2024-25, including around £125 billion on people of working age and children. This is very much work in progress. Bearing in mind the point behind her question, I can say that my department, the DWP, is working ever more closely with the DHSC and other necessary departments to take a range of initiatives forward.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I cannot resist making the point that the last Labour Government actually lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. It is welcome that the Government, with less than a month to go, have renewed the household support fund temporarily. The last time that noble Lords discussed this issue at Oral Questions, I asked the Minister how the Government would work on long-term strategies to fight poverty rather than short-term measures renewed only at the last minute. My question remains very much the same: given that two-thirds of children growing up in poverty live in a household where one adult works, are the Government going to work to create long-term stability and security for families, including those experiencing in-work poverty?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Again, the noble Baroness has made a good point about looking beyond a year and taking a long-term view. More than 26 million awards of support were made between October 2021 and March 2023 across the first of the household support fund schemes. I reassure her that the largest category of spend has been on food support, including support during school holidays, targeted particularly at children who receive free school meals in term time. The focus on children is incredibly important and should be continued.