Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Budget Statement 2024, the Spring Statement 2025 and the Spending Review 2025, what forecast she has made of levels of child poverty during this Parliament.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department publishes the estimated impact of specific policies where appropriate. The Department, for example, recently made public the impact of the expansion of the Free School meal extension announced as part of the Spending Review 2025. The impact assessment can be found here [Free School Meals expansion - Impact on poverty levels - GOV.UK].
The impact demonstrated that Free School Meals will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of parliament, establishing a long-term Crisis and Resilience Fund supported by £1 billion a year [including Barnett impact]
Delivering our manifesto commitment to tackle child poverty is a priority for this Government. The Child Poverty Taskforce is progressing work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy in autumn that will deliver fully funded measures to tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty.
The Strategy will look at levers across four key themes of increasing incomes, reducing essential costs, increasing financial resilience; and better local support especially in the early years. This will build on the reform plans underway across government and work underway in Devolved Governments.
As a significant downpayment ahead of Strategy publication, we have already taken substantive action across major drivers of child poverty through Spending Review 2025. This includes an expansion of Free School Meals that will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of the parliament, establishing a long-term Crisis and Resilience Fund supported by £1 billion a year (including Barnett impact), investing in local family support services, and extending the £3 bus fare cap. We also announced the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation and £13.2 billion including Barnett impact across the Parliament for the Warm Homes Plan.
Our commitments at the 2025 Spending Review come on top of the existing action we have taken which includes expanding free breakfast clubs, capping the number of branded school uniform items children are expected to wear, increasing the national minimum wage for those on the lowest incomes and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a Fair Repayment Rate on Universal Credit deductions.
Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she plans to replace the provision of upfront childcare costs with Universal Credit with advance payments.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
There are currently no plans to change the way upfront childcare costs are paid. Claimants of the Universal Credit childcare element can claim upfront childcare costs through the Flexible Support Fund, to help ease them into the Universal Credit childcare costs payment cycle.
There is also help with upfront childcare costs for eligible Universal Credit customers through Budgeting Advances.
Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average cost to her Department was of a Personal Independence Payment mandatory reconsideration in 2024-25; and how much and what proportion of this cost was spent on successful appeals.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
PIP Unit Costs | 2024-25 |
Mandatory Reconsideration | £82 |
Cost figures are rounded to the nearest pound.
Data Source: ABM
The cost figures quoted are estimated DWP level 1 operating costs, including both direct delivery staff and non-staff costs. Non-staff costs are only those costs incurred in local cost centres, relating to direct delivery staff. They show the average Unit Cost of processing one PIP Mandatory Reconsideration.
Please note that the data supplied is from the Departmental Activity Based Models. This data is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal
Departmental use only and has not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standards. It should therefore be treated with caution. The Departmental Activity Based staffing models are a snapshot of how many people were identified as undertaking specified activities as assigned by line managers.
24/25 model is in a process of sign off therefore the numbers may be a subject to change
We do not hold information on the unit cost of successful appeals.
Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the proposed reforms in the Pathways to Work Green Paper on the number of appeals that will be made by people who will lose their eligibility for the personal independence payment; and whether she plans to allocate additional funding for the administration of such appeals.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP will work with the Ministry of Justice as normal and plan for any impacts.
Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the Pathways to Work Green Paper on (a) local government and (b) the voluntary sector.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
No assessment has yet been made. Information on the impacts of the Pathways to Work Green Paper has been published here: ‘Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper’.
A further programme of analysis to support development of the proposals in the Green Paper will be developed and undertaken in the coming months.
Notes:
Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the Pathways to Work Green Paper on the number of people in poverty in each of the next five years.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
An assessment of the potential impact of the Pathways to Work Green Paper on the number of people in poverty in each of the next five years is not yet available.
The government's impact assessment regarding the Pathways to Work Green Paper is available here: Spring Statement 2025 health and disability benefit reforms – Impacts.
The Office for Budget Responsibility will publish its assessment of the labour market impacts of the Green Paper proposals at the time of the Autumn Budget.
Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the merits of writing off debt payments for Child Support Agency payments valued below £500.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) has the ability to write off Child Support Agency (CSA) debt that is £500 and under in circumstances where no payment has been made within the last 90 days and where administrative powers have been considered but were deemed inappropriate or ineffective.
Writing off is not a quick or easy decision and involves exhausting other approaches to deal with the debt. All Child Support Agency debt is now at least 11 years old.
In the year ending March 2024 £17.8m of CSA debt was collected and £13.5m was written off.