Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans his Department has to issue guidance to councils covering Buckingham and Bletchley constituency on monitoring local outcomes of the Child Poverty Strategy.

We are strengthening our partnership with the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) with our Civil Society Covenant. We recognise that the VCSE sector has a strong record of supporting families and is the bedrock of our communities.

We are putting tackling child poverty at the heart of local government by including child poverty in the new Outcomes Framework for local government as a contextual outcome. The Framework also includes wider priority outcomes that will help tackle child poverty such as preventing and reducing homelessness and rough sleeping; access to a decent, safe and affordable home; local growth; and promoting health and wellbeing in children.

Alongside the Strategy, we have set out our initial plans for monitoring and evaluation to ensure our strategy is on track to tackle child poverty as part of our ongoing commitment to transparency, accountability, and continued learning.