Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of measures to reduce child poverty in Northern Ireland; and what steps he is taking with the Northern Ireland Executive to improve household incomes, reduce child material deprivation and ensure that eligible families receive the financial support available to them.

Reducing child poverty requires coordinated action across UK government, devolved governments, and regional and local government where different policy levers sit. Devolved governments have set out their own approaches, reflecting different policy choices and contexts. These are complemented by the UK-wide Strategy and contribute to the shared evidence base on what works.

This approach recognises the devolved context, where devolved governments hold responsibilities and have their own strategies and priorities for tackling child poverty, and focuses on alignment and shared learning. We will continue to work with devolved governments including the Northern Ireland Executive, including through the Four Nations Group on Child Poverty.

The Department assesses the effectiveness of its measures to reduce child poverty through the monitoring and evaluation arrangements set out in the Child Poverty Strategy Monitoring and Evaluation Baseline Report: Our Children, Our Future: Tackling Child Poverty: Monitoring and Evaluation - Baseline Report - GOV.UK.

Our UK wide Child Poverty Strategy sets out immediate action to reduce child poverty while delivering the foundations for long-term change. This includes removing the Universal Credit two-child limit, which the Northern Ireland Executive has also chosen to mirror, and across the UK is expected to lift 450,000 children out of relative poverty in the final year of this Parliament.

Taken alongside other measures, the strategy will lift 550,000 children out of poverty in 2029/30. The measures in the Strategy are expected to lead to the largest reduction in child poverty over a Parliament since comparable records began

We worked closely with the Northern Ireland Executive during the development of the Child Poverty Strategy, and will continue to engage with the Northern Ireland Executive as part of its ongoing delivery.