Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds
Debate between Olivia Blake and Rupa HuqWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Olivia Blake
It has been really helpful to hear from other Members on a number of issues. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) spoke about the inconsistency in local authority support. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) painted a vibrant picture of the community she represents and the deep poverty felt by the migrant communities within it. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for speaking so passionately about child poverty. He spoke about the use of food banks and the mental health impacts of poverty on children in particular, which I was very moved by. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) made it clear that NRPF deepens the poverty that young people experience, and highlighted the opportunity that we have with the child poverty strategy.
I thank the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), for her focus on free school meals. That issue has been addressed but it points to a challenge: if the move to free school meals is based on receipt of universal credit, we need to ensure that young people with no recourse to public funds are not lost in that, because we won that battle in the last Parliament during covid to ensure that they could get access to free school meals. We just need to make sure that their eligibility does not slip through the cracks if there is a different way of coming up with the numbers of who is eligible and who is not.
I thank the shadow Minister and congratulate him on his first outing—
Olivia Blake
The acting actual Minister. I congratulate him on his first time at the Dispatch Box. I was really heartened by some of the things he said, but once again, I want to make sure that all the measures in the child poverty strategy take into account the fact that these people are not eligible through means-tested criteria, so support based purely on those will not benefit these children. I think the Minister has heard that point and the many others that have been made today. I thank him for taking that back to the Minister responsible, and I look forward to reading more on this issue as the months draw closer to the child poverty strategy being developed.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered child poverty and no recourse to public funds.