Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential effects of the roll-out of Universal Credit on child poverty levels in Garston and Halewood constituency.

National statistics on children in low income are set out in DWP’s annual "Households Below Average Income" publication. The latest figures available are for the year to 2016/17. The number and proportion of children in low income is not available at a constituency level in this publication because the survey sample sizes are too small to support the production of robust estimates at this geography. Latest 3-year estimates for the North West region in 2014/15 - 2016/17 show the rate of children in absolute low income at 20% Before Housing Costs, this is a decrease of 4 percentage points from 24% in 2007/08-2009/10.

The best way to help people improve their lives is through employment, and people on Universal Credit move into work faster and stay in work longer. Work offers families the best opportunity to move out of poverty and Universal Credit strengthens incentives for parents to move into and progress in work. There are 300,000 fewer children in absolute low income compared with 2010 – a record low. The Government has made a statutory commitment to continue to publish data on individuals in low income, including on the number of children in low income. We will continue to monitor the number of children in low income for future Households Below Average Income publications as the roll-out of Universal Credit progresses.