Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mel Stride and Tonia Antoniazzi

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Let me take the second of my hon. Friend’s points first. As I have outlined, there is always human intervention when it is appropriate. None the less, he is quite right to raise the issue of fraud and error. We have seen a reduction in the Department over the past year of some 10% across the benefit system, and much of that has been driven by machine learning and data analytics.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

3. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of children experiencing destitution.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)]

Child poverty and its reduction is absolutely core to the mission of my Department, which is why we have focused on cost of living payments, why we have put up benefits across the board by 10.1% and why the Chancellor announced £3.5 billion in the spring statement to support our back to work programmes to raise people out of poverty.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

One of the crowning achievements of the previous Labour Government was to lift 1 million children out of poverty. How does the Secretary of State think that that compares with the Conservatives’ record given that new figures show that children are experiencing destitution, and that that has actually tripled since 2017?

[Mel Stride]

I think that our record is extremely clear. Since 2010, we have 1.7 million fewer people in absolute poverty, 400,000 fewer children in absolute poverty, and 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty. Under Labour’s watch, we had 1 million people parked on long-term sickness benefits for more than 10 years.