Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the number of children living in poverty, broken down by (1) single-, and (2) two-, parent households.

Statistics on the number and percentage of people living in low income households over time, including children and those in work, are set out in the annual "Households Below Average Income" publication.

In 2018/19 2,400,000 children were living in absolute low income, before housing costs. 700,000 were in single parent households, 1,700,000 were in couple households.

These statistics are also available on Stat-Xplore: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/jsf/login.xhtml

Guidance in the use of Stat-Xplore is available here: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/index.html

We are committed to supporting the lowest-paid families through the pandemic and is why we’ve targeted our support to those most in need by raising the living wage, spending hundreds of billions to safeguard jobs, boosting welfare support by billions and introducing the Covid Winter Grant Scheme to help children and families stay warm and well-fed during the coldest months.