Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds

Anna Sabine Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Hallam (Olivia Blake) on securing this important debate—it is also clearly important to her.

No child in Britain should grow up in poverty. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it is nothing short of a political choice that millions of children go without the basics, including food, housing and opportunity. It is a choice that the last Government made repeatedly.

Liberal Democrats believe in a fairer society in which every child has the chance of a bright future, regardless of their background, postcode or parents’ immigration status. Look at what happened under Conservative rule—there are more than half a million more children in poverty since 2015. That is not a policy failure; it is policy working exactly as designed. Choices such as the two-child benefit cap, cuts to universal credit and the freeze on child benefit are not abstract figures; they are deliberate decisions that hit the poorest families hardest. Families with no recourse to public funds—those in the UK on visas or seeking asylum—were even harder hit, as the hon. Member for Sheffield Hallam rightly said.

It is morally indefensible that a child could go hungry simply because of their parents’ immigration status. Children are children, and they need food, care and opportunity—that should not be conditional. We therefore welcome the Government’s decision to permanently extend free school meal eligibility to children in NRPF households. It is a victory for decency and common sense, and I am proud that the Liberal Democrats helped push for it. However, we must go further.

We need automatic enrolment for free school meals so that no eligible child is left behind due to bureaucracy or poor information, because red tape should not be a barrier to feeding hungry children. Although the Government have extended free school meals to families on universal credit, strict income thresholds still apply to NRPF households, and that must change. We must ensure that all children in poverty, without exception, have access to free school meals.

Longer term, Liberal Democrats are clear that we want to see universal free school meals for every child—no stigma or barriers, just fairness and nourishment for all. Let us not forget that the NRPF policy was never designed with child welfare in mind. It has grown over decades into a rigid system that denies thousands access to the most basic safety nets, especially during crises such as the cost of living emergency we are facing now. Yes, some families can apply for a change of conditions to gain access to public funds, but that process is far too complex and burdensome, requiring specialist support that many families cannot access. The Government must simplify the system and make it navigable and humane, because when children go hungry, we should not ask their parents to fill out a 40-page form, often in a second language, to prove their destitution.

Around 3.5 million people in the UK currently hold visas that usually come with an NRPF condition. We do not even know how many of them are living in hardship, because the Home Office, as we have heard, does not track that data. That is not governance; it is negligence. While local authorities are left to pick up the pieces, they do so with dwindling resources and with impossible decisions pushed on to them by a central Government who wash their hands of responsibility.

Liberal Democrats believe it is time to stop punishing children for the immigration status of their parents. It is time to stop hiding behind bureaucracy and to make the moral and political choice to end child poverty once and for all.