Oral Answers to Questions Debate
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Meg Hillier
Main Page: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)Department Debates - View all Meg Hillier's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(4 days, 1 hour ago)
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Alison McGovern
The Health Secretary and I talked about child poverty many times as we sat on the Opposition Benches watching the situation for our kids get worse and worse every year. The Member makes a very serious and important point about the wide-ranging consequences of poverty and, if I may, I would encourage him to submit the evidence he mentioned to the child poverty taskforce so that we can take full account of it.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
One in two children in my constituency live in poverty. There is a lot of speculation swirling around the excellent child poverty taskforce, which I applaud the Government for establishing, including that the cap could be lifted for under-fives, which would affect fewer than 20,000 households compared with the 440,000 households which currently are affected by the two-child benefit cap. Can the Minister reassure the House and the country that the child poverty taskforce is looking to support all children in poverty, whatever decisions it comes up with, and not just a small segment of them?