Oral Answers to Questions

David Taylor Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Western]

We value the vital role that fathers and partners play in caring for children and in supporting their partners. We recognise that parental leave and pay entitlements, such as paid paternity leave, play a key role in their ability to do that. My hon. Friend is right to cite the planned parental leave review. That is being led by colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade, and I will write to them on his behalf to suggest a meeting.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

10. What steps her Department plans to take with employers to help increase economic growth.

[Gill German (Clwyd North) (Lab)]

11. What steps her Department plans to take with employers to help increase economic growth.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Liz Kendall)]

To get Britain growing again, we have to get Britain working again, and supporting employers is critical to achieving that goal. That is why last week I announced an overhaul of how the DWP helps businesses, including the introduction of a dedicated employers’ team in the DWP, ensuring that there are single account managers for businesses, so they do not have to have multiple conversations with different jobcentres, and the expansion of the number of training programmes tailored to employers’ individual needs. We are working in partnership with businesses: that is how we all go for growth.

[David Taylor]

The last Labour Government reduced child poverty by nearly half, from 3 million to 1.6 million, and legislated to eradicate child poverty by 2020. Instead, under the Conservatives, the number of children in relative poverty significantly increased between 2010 and 2023. Does the Secretary of State agree that working with employers to help people, particularly parents, into decent, well-paid jobs, is essential not only to growing our economy, but to reducing poverty, including child poverty?

[Liz Kendall]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that having more parents, including lone parents and second earners in couples, in better paid jobs is critical to tackling child poverty. There has been a big shift in the nature of poverty since our success during the last Labour Government, when we lifted over 600,000 children out of poverty, as there are now more children growing up in poverty in a working household, so improving the parental employment rate is critical to driving down those numbers.