Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to prevent child poverty in Ashfield constituency, in the context of disability benefit reforms.

Delivering our manifesto commitment to tackle child poverty is an urgent priority for this Government. The Ministerial Taskforce is working to publish a Child Poverty Strategy looking at levers across four key themes of increasing incomes, reducing essential costs, increasing financial resilience; and better local support especially in the early years. We are listening carefully to the voices of children and families living in poverty, including children with disabilities and special educational needs. Later this month, the Taskforce will meet with external experts, including disability charities and organisations, to discuss the impact of poverty on disabled children specifically.

Alongside our work on the Child Poverty Strategy, we have set out ambitious plans to reform employment support and support disabled people and people with health conditions to stay in work and get back into work. Our Get Britain Working (GBW) White Paper includes £15 million funding to support trailblazers and local development of GBW plans. We announced in our Pathways to Work Green Paper that we would establish a new guarantee of support for all disabled people and people with health conditions claiming out of work benefits who want help to get into or return to work, backed up by £1 billion of new funding.