Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of her Department's proposed changes to the Work Capability Assessment on the Child Poverty Strategy.

The Work Capability Assessment is not working and needs to be reformed or replaced. We are committed to reforming the system of health and disability benefits so that it promotes and enables employment among as many people as possible. The system must also work to support disabled people to live independently. It is also vital to ensure that the system is financially sustainable in the long term.

We are working to develop proposals for reform in the months ahead and will set them out in a Green Paper ahead of the Spring Statement later this year.

Delivering our manifesto commitment to tackle child poverty is an urgent priority for this Government, and the Ministerial Taskforce is working to publish a Child Poverty Strategy which will deliver lasting change.

The Strategy will look at all available levers across four key themes of increasing incomes, reducing essential costs, increasing financial resilience; and better local support especially in the early years. This will build on the reform plans underway across Government and work underway in Devolved Governments.