Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the child poverty taskforce will consider the impact of proposed reforms to the health and disability benefit system on child poverty rates in the UK.

Tackling child poverty is at the heart of this Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity, and the Ministerial Child Poverty Taskforce is working to publish a Child Poverty Strategy to deliver lasting change.

The Strategy will look at 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. As part of the Strategy's development, the Taskforce is considering the potential impact of policies across government.

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 and be financially sustainable in the long term. We will set out our proposals for reform in a Green Paper ahead of the Spring Statement later this year.