Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will hold discussions with relevant stakeholders on the inclusion of targets for child poverty reduction in Hexham constituency within the forthcoming Child Poverty Strategy.

Tackling child poverty is at the heart of this government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best start in life.

Our recently published landmark Child Poverty Strategy is set to lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030.

The publication sets out how we intend to monitor and evaluate the impacts of the Strategy, including understanding how this varies across the UK and for different groups. The publication also sets out how we will measure the experience of children in the most severe and acute forms of poverty.

The Child Poverty Taskforce and Unit engaged extensively with stakeholders in the North East throughout the development of the Strategy. This includes engagement with the North East Poverty Commission and attendance at the North East Child Poverty Summit. Furthermore, Kim McGuinness, Mayor of the North East Combined Authority, attended a Taskforce meeting in September 2024 to discuss the experience of poverty in local communities and approaches to tackling child poverty.