Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Morgan and Will Quince

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

16. What recent assessment her Department has made of trends in the level of child poverty.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Will Quince)]

This Government take child poverty extremely seriously. The evidence shows that work is the best route out of poverty and that there are 730,000 fewer children in workless households compared with 2010, but there is more to do—one child in poverty is one too many—and this is a key priority for me and the Secretary of State. I will continue to work with colleagues from across the House, other Government Departments and stakeholders to identify and tackle the root causes of poverty.

[Stephen Morgan]

Children are not getting the nutrition that they need on the 170 days a year when they are not at school. Local authorities and devolved Governments are tackling this issue head on; why are this Government not doing so?

[Will Quince]

This is probably a question for the Department for Education, but we are supporting more than 1 million children with free school meals, investing up to £26 million in school breakfast clubs and providing approximately 2.3 million four to six-year-olds with a portion of fresh fruit or vegetables each day at school. Through the Healthy Start programme, hundreds of thousands of low-income families benefit from vouchers that can be redeemed against fruit, vegetables, milk and infant formula.