Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for this question and for all the campaigning work she has done on it. Removing the two-child limit, combined with the changes we are making around free school meals, the warm home discount, capping the cost of school uniform and rolling out more childcare to more families, will lift more families—more children—out of poverty. It is worth noting that around 70% of kids growing up in poverty are in a family where someone works.

[Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The Office for Budget Responsibility shows that welfare spending will be £32 billion a year more at the end of this Parliament, just as a result of decisions in the last Budget. Why was the Chancellor not more honest in the Labour party manifesto about the choices she wanted to make?

[Torsten Bell]

The welfare state that the Conservative party created is failing, and we are changing it. Welfare spending rose three times as fast under the Conservative Government than it has under this one, because they created a broken welfare system, and I repeat: we will change it.