Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of abolition of the Child Poverty Unit on literacy rates of children living in poverty.

The Prime Minister has set out clearly that she is committed to building a country that works for everyone – not just the privileged few.

Tackling child poverty and disadvantage is a priority for this government. To do this, we need to focus on the root causes of poverty, not the symptoms.

This is why we repealed the narrow, income-based targets as set out in the Child Poverty Act 2010, and which the Child Poverty Unit was established to support. Instead, we replaced them with statutory measures of parental worklessness and children’s educational attainment – to drive action on the two areas that can make the biggest difference to children’s outcomes.