Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds

Debate between Tahir Ali and Olivia Blake

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake]

Yes, I agree completely that there is huge pressure on young people in migrant families to provide such services. There is also pressure on young carers who are migrants as well, which is another concern. My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. Young people should not experience such situations, but sadly they often do.

IPPR and Praxis found that a significant proportion of migrant parents are held back from working because they face barriers to accessing childcare; currently, 40% of migrant parents do not use childcare, as they or their partner are unable to secure employment. I know that the Government believe that these things are privileges that need to be earned and that migrants coming to the UK should be able to support themselves financially. However, we should not view basic necessities as some kind of reward. They are lifelines that help people to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table and their homes warm, nor should we ignore the fact that migrants already pay into the system through tax contributions.

We also need to view NRPF in the context of wider systemic barriers in our immigration system, such as prolonged routes to settlement, high visa fees and the immigration health surcharge. Together, it all creates a perfect storm whereby families face never-ending cycles of destitution, homelessness and uncertainty. Children should not pay the price for that.

We know that growing up in poverty has terrible short-term and long-term consequences.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate and I thank you, Dr Huq, for chairing it. Does my hon. Friend agree that children should not be penalised in this way, especially when there are delays in determining applications from those with have no recourse to public funds? It is not their fault. In my constituency of Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, the child poverty rate is over 47%, but it would be even higher if we included those children. Why should children be made to suffer just because of a delay in determining people’s applications? Those children would be the future of this country and contribute through the tax system and the development of this country in coming years.

[Olivia Blake]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. That statistic makes a stark point. He also makes a strong point about why the Government should consider these issues in the upcoming child poverty strategy.

We know that growing up in poverty has terrible short-term and long-term consequences, and there is mounting evidence to show the wide-reaching impact of poverty, particularly on migrant children. Children in affected households experience food insecurity, overcrowded housing, barriers to education, and serious mental and physical health risks. Poverty can also impact children’s opportunities to develop their social skills and build meaningful relationships during critical formative years. Therefore, I question the line of argument that says that these restrictions are in place to promote integration.

In their joint inquiry on the impact of immigration policy on poverty, the APPG on migration, of which I am a co-chair, and the APPG on poverty and inequality found that the no recourse to public funds policy is a huge contributor to deep poverty, child poverty, isolation and vulnerability. I am grateful for the ministerial response to our letter about the inquiry, but I urge Ministers to look at some of the findings in the report. Perhaps they could follow up on that point in writing. The findings are unsurprising, given that the widening of the policy was introduced by the former Government, as part of the hostile environment, with the very intention to make life more difficult for migrants in the UK. However, destitution by design policies are not just inhumane, but ineffective and very costly, with local authorities often having to foot the bill.

Councils provide essential safety net support to safeguard the welfare of families who have no recourse to public funds and are at risk of homelessness or destitution. That often leads to local authorities providing long-term support for households, with the average period of support lasting more than 600 days for families with children, and longer for adults with care needs. That places enormous pressure on already stretched local authorities, which receive no compensation or direct funding to support families with NRPF.

The NRPF Network found that, from within the 78 local authorities that supplied information for 2023-24, 1,563 households were being supported by the end of March 2024, at an average annual cost of £21,700 per household and a total annual cost of £33.9 million. In 2023-24, Sheffield city council spent at least £1.2 million supporting people with no recourse to public funds, and it did not get any compensation for that. COMPAS estimates that the number of families receiving local authority support in England and Wales has risen by over 150% since 2012-13, with local authority costs rising by almost £230%.

Despite statutory obligations under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, support for migrant families from local authorities remains very inconsistent. Many families remain locked out of local authority support as the threshold for accessing it is highly conditional, and there can be robust gatekeeping from local authorities—as they try to protect their budgets, I am sure. There is therefore an urgent need to standardise section 17, and to clarify guidelines on financial and housing assistance to ensure consistent support across local authorities.

[Olivia Blake]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has made that point, because London Councils itself has previously described this issue as a

“direct cost shunt resulting from central government policy.”

The Local Government Association continues to call for this ambiguity to be resolved so that councils can support families affected by NRPF, many of whom it says are at risk of extreme hardship. This is not the edge of poverty; this is deep poverty.

That leads me on to another important point: legal aid. Certain visa holders can submit a change of conditions application to the Home Office to have NRPF conditions lifted, but the application process is complex and often requires legal advice to navigate and complete successfully. The process itself has been found to be unlawful in the High Court on numerous occasions, most recently because of lengthy delays in how decisions are being processed. There is an urgent need to address the long-term sustainability and accessibility of the legal aid system for immigration cases. In South Yorkshire, two out of five legal aid firms have stopped delivering legal aid immigration services entirely, and there was a gap between provision and need of nearly 9,000 cases across Yorkshire in 2023-24. This means that many migrants are being prevented from exercising their legal rights to apply for leave to remain, to change or renew their status, or to lift no recourse to public funds conditions.

In that context, I am concerned about the proposal in the Government’s recent immigration White Paper to extend the qualifying period for British citizenship to 10 years. That will lock more families into prolonged no recourse to public funds status and will inevitably pile more pressure on local authorities to pick up the pieces. We know that high visa costs and constant uncertainty prevent parents from planning long term, and the requirement to reapply for visas also heightens the risk of falling out of legal status. The IPPR found that 82% of migrants who borrowed money for visa renewals were in significant debt. I am also concerned that this short-sighted move undermines integration and creates an ever-growing population of second-class residents.

In a survey of its clients, Praxis found that three in four migrants feel that being on the 10-year route prevents them from feeling that they belong in the UK, despite most having lived here for over a decade. With a consultation on the immigration White Paper expected in the summer, will the Government consider the wide-reaching consequences that extending the qualifying period will have for migrant children, in particular? Has an assessment been made of the number of children and families who are likely to be pushed into poverty as a result of the White Paper’s proposed reforms?

Finally, I will end on the child poverty strategy. I welcome the Minister’s recognition of the distinct challenges faced by migrant children living in poverty and the confirmation that the strategy will include all children across the UK, including migrant children. However, this commitment must be matched by the Home Office’s meaningful involvement in the strategy’s development. The delay in publishing the strategy presents a valuable opportunity, as we now have the chance to turn the page on the hostile environment policy and work towards a strategy that genuinely encompasses all children. The strategy will fall short if it excludes this significant cohort.

Targeted action will be necessary for this group of children, as many levers that might help to lift other children out of poverty will have no impact on them. Given that, can the Minister say more about the cross-departmental work to provide solutions that specifically address this cohort? The lack of systemic data and official figures on the numbers affected by NRPF makes this particularly challenging. How can we deal with the distinct challenges faced by migrant children without knowing how many are affected?

I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us when the Government will provide accurate and up-to-date information on how many families and children are directly restricted by NRPF and how many British-born children are affected by this policy. The Child Poverty Action Group, the UK’s leading child poverty charity, has called for NRPF to be abolished for families with children, and the Work and Pensions Committee recommended in its 2022 inquiry that no family with children should be subject to NRPF conditions for more than five years.

[Tahir Ali]

Does my hon. Friend agree that child poverty is a political choice, and that we as politicians—especially this Government—can take action to address it? Immediate action should be taken to make sure that no one suffers for longer than necessary.

[Olivia Blake]

Yes, I agree. My hon. Friend makes an important point that we have choices. This is not inevitable, and the upcoming strategy is an opportunity that will hopefully allow us to turn the corner for many families.

The all-party parliamentary group on poverty and inequality and the all-party parliamentary group on migration concluded in their report that the Government should limit the NRPF condition, especially for those on routes to settlement, to a maximum of five years. At a minimum, the Government should consider extending child benefit to migrant families with NRPF and expand funded childcare entitlement for working migrant parents.

However, we also have to be honest that the most effective way to lift children out of poverty is to abolish NRPF entirely and to allow families to meet the thresholds for support via the existing means-tested welfare system. I know that this will not be the Government’s position, given their previous stance on this issue, but I ask that as many mitigations as possible are considered for this vulnerable group of children.

According to COMPAS, removing the NRPF restriction for families with children under the age of 18 would lift significant numbers of children out of poverty, and the NRPF Network has found that lifting NRPF restrictions for families with children would result in a positive net value of £872 million over 10 years. Around two thirds of adults in the UK think that migrants should be able to claim the same welfare benefits as British citizens within three years, according to the National Centre for Social Research, which shows that the public are on the side of migrant children.

In our joint statement in the inquiry report, which I have referenced quite a few times and which I hope the Minister has an opportunity to read, the co-chairs and the members of the APPGs remarked:

“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that policy is sometimes designed to push people into poverty in the hope that it will deter others from moving to the UK, even though there is little evidence that this would indeed be a deterrent.”

While reducing poverty should be a policy objective shared by the whole of government, sadly the evidence and research that I have presented today shows that, unfortunately, poverty and migration continue to be treated as completely separate issues. Given the large number of children who are impacted, that is completely wrong, and there should be moves to address that across government.

We can all agree that child poverty has no place in one of the richest countries in the world in the 21st century. I agree with the Prime Minister when he said that action on child poverty will be

“a measure of what this Government does”.

Let us take the opportunity to take the necessary steps to alleviate poverty for all children in the UK, not just those with British passports.