Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

We welcome the High Court ruling, which showed that the policy is lawful. However, the hon. Lady is absolutely right: in terms of kinship carers, we are going to be making those changes. This will have to come about through regulations in Parliament and we will bring those forward shortly. I would point out that, as the Secretary of State made clear in her written statement, we will be making changes to include not just those in kinship arrangements, but children who are adopted and would otherwise be in local authority care.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is completely right that in our country someone should be able to have as many children as they want as long as they can support them, but it should not be that the taxpayer has to subsidise them?

[Alok Sharma]

As I said in response to the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), the aim of this policy is to strike the right balance between support for claimants and fairness to taxpayers, but of course we do have exceptions in place, quite rightly.