Child Poverty Strategy

Helen Whately Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I will start with something we can all agree on: none of us wants to see children grow up in poverty. We all know something of what that looks like: some hon. Members have lived it themselves; for others, it is part of the bread and butter of constituency work. Even in the wealthiest constituencies there are pockets of poverty, where children spend months living in bed and breakfasts, their meals coming from the local food bank, not knowing when they will have a bed in a room they can call their own and worrying about their mum—and it is usually their mum—and how she will pay the bills. None of that helps kids to succeed in life. Of course this Government should be working on how to improve the lives of children, as we did before them, but nothing I have heard from the Secretary of State today—however well intentioned—gives me any confidence that they are going to fix the problem.

Last week, the Prime Minister grabbed the headlines by saying that the Government will change how supermarkets display baby formula and give customers loyalty points—hardly the groundbreaking fix for child poverty that we have been promised. At the Budget, the Government crowed about how they will lift so many children out of relative poverty by lifting the two-child cap, and that will, of course, help with the stats on that one metric, just like the free taxpayer-funded breakfasts. However, ditching the two-child benefit cap will raise taxes on working people, including those on the poverty line, and disincentivise work.

For a measure that the Prime Minister now speaks about with such pride, I am surprised that it took the Government 18 months to bring it in. In that time, the Prime Minister and Chancellor rejected many demands from their Back Benchers to lift the cap, arguing that the policy was unaffordable; in fact, the Prime Minister was so committed to the cap that he removed the Whip from the brave Labour rebels who voted to lift it. But then, as rivals for the Labour leadership circled, the cap indeed went. Chopping and changing policy based on political pressure is no way to govern, and it is certainly no way to solve child poverty.

There is a way to boost the prospects of the country’s children. It is through plentiful, well-paid jobs. That way people can provide for themselves and their families, pay their rent or mortgage, do their weekly food shop and afford school uniforms for their kids. The Centre for Social Justice found that children in workless households are four times more likely to be materially deprived. Under this Government, the number of children growing up in workless households has seen the fastest increase on record, rising to 1.5 million children.

Contrast that to our record, which saw the number of children in workless households—[Laughter.] Labour Members can laugh, but honestly they should listen to what makes a difference to children’s lives. Contrast that to our record, which saw the number of children in workless households decrease year on year from 2014. With unemployment now going up month on month, the number of children in workless households is sadly likely to keep going up.

There is something even more fundamental that helps to stave off poverty. It is the family. Some 44% of children in lone-parent households live in poverty, compared with 25% of children who live in households with a couple. Strong, working families raise children who are less likely to be in poverty—it is as simple as that. Yet the Government’s poverty strategy ignores that fact entirely. Rather than tackling the root causes of poverty, the strategy concerns itself with vouchers for formula milk. How many children will be brought out of poverty thanks to those vouchers? Why is there nothing in the strategy on parenting skills, which we know are key determinants of child outcomes? Why do the Government insist on using the misleading metric of relative poverty instead of measures that reflect real living standards?

With Labour’s Budget slapping thousands of pounds of extra taxes on hard-working and hard-up families, how many families are going to be plunged into poverty because of their tax rises? How many more households will now be eligible for universal credit? If the Government truly believe that lifting the two-child benefit cap is essential to reducing poverty, why did it take the Prime Minister 18 months to do it, and why did he remove the Whip from his own MPs who voted for it? Perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us the real reason. Was it actually about the Prime Minister saving his own skin?

I know that the Government are well meaning, but this strategy is all wrong. Tackling poverty is about decent jobs, lower taxes and a stable foundation for every child. Throwing money at the problem to improve the statistics is not the answer, and they will certainly not lift children out of poverty by making the whole country poorer.

The policies in the strategy and the Budget risk trapping families in long-term dependency instead of lifting them out of it. This strategy is so far from the bold action that Labour is making it out to be and that this country needs to break the cycle of worklessness for families on benefits, give children the best start in life and give taxpayers a fair deal—fair to those who pay in, as well as those who get help. The fact is—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The shadow Secretary of State has taken even longer than the Secretary of State and is well over her time limit. I call the Secretary of State.