Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of inadequate winter clothing, including the absence of an adequate coat, on students.

We want all children to have the best start in life and the opportunity to thrive. Our child poverty strategy focuses on increasing incomes, reducing costs and strengthening public services to support children and their families. As part of this, we have introduced a new measure, deep material poverty, which captures whether families can afford essentials such as adequate clothing, food and heating, reflecting pressures beyond income alone. In 2024/25, 13% of children were in deep material poverty, down by 100,000 on the previous year.

Overall, our action to tackle child poverty is set to lift 550,000 children out of poverty in the final year of this Parliament, the largest reduction in a single Parliament since comparable records began.