Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to prioritise preventative policy-making in their poverty and early intervention programmes.

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 and disadvantage. This is why we have introduced two 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.

As part of our approach, we fully recognise the importance of the right intervention, at the right time. This is why, for example, we are developing a new approach to parental conflict. It is based on the latest evidence from the Early Intervention Foundation that children exposed to frequent, intense and poorly resolved conflict between their parents are at risk of poorer long term outcomes.