Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iqbal Mohamed and Rachel Reeves

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

11. What steps her Department is taking through the child poverty taskforce to help reduce levels of relative poverty.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rachel Reeves)]

The Government are taking action to tackle child poverty, by removing the two-child limit and by expanding free school meals and breakfast clubs, including the seven breakfast clubs already rolled out in the Dewsbury and Batley constituency. As a result, 550,000 children will be lifted out of poverty in this Parliament: the biggest reduction in child poverty in any Parliament ever.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

In my constituency, 44.4% of children are living in poverty, according to the latest Government figures. Yet Oxfam reports that just 56 billionaires in the UK now hold more wealth than 27 million people combined in our country, and their wealth rose on average by more than £230 million each last year. Does the Chancellor accept that child poverty is not inevitable but the result of political choices about who this Government want to protect? Can she explain how the child poverty taskforce can succeed without the Treasury being willing to pursue far more fair and equitable wealth distribution, through closing tax loopholes, taxing wealth and not just income, and preventing—