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 implications for her policies of the report entitled A Clean Start in Life, published by In Kind Direct on 2 May 2025.

Tackling child poverty is at the heart of this Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity. The Child Poverty Taskforce is continuing its urgent work and is exploring all available levers, including considering social security reforms, to drive forward short and long-term actions across government to reduce child poverty.

The Strategy will tackle overall child poverty as well as going beyond that to focus on children in deepest poverty lacking essentials, and what is needed to give every child the best start in life. We are focused on reducing and alleviating the effects of child poverty to improve children’s lives and life chances now and tackle the root causes of child poverty in the long term.

The Strategy will look at 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.

The vital work of the Taskforce comes alongside our commitments to triple investment in breakfast clubs to over £30 million, introduce a Fair Repayment Rate for deductions from Universal Credit, improve the adequacy of the standard allowance with the first sustained above inflation rise in the basic rate of Universal Credit since it was introduced and increase the National Living Wage to £12.21 an hour to boost the pay of three million workers.

To further support struggling households, we have provided funding of £742 million to extend the Household Support Fund from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 in England, plus additional funding for the Devolved Governments.