Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of their childcare support policy on child poverty in single-parent households; and what consideration they have given to reforming childcare support to reflect the financial constraints faced by families with one member in paid employment.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Poverty scars the lives and life chances of our children. 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.
The Child Poverty Strategy sets out the steps we are taking to reduce child poverty in the short term, as well as putting in place the building blocks we need to change the course we’re on and create long-term change.
The Government is investing in the future of our children by removing the two child limit on Universal Credit, reinstating support for all children in the household. This comes alongside a package of measures that will drive down working poverty by raising the minimum wage, creating more secure jobs by strengthening rights at work, and expanding free childcare.
We recognise that access to high quality, affordable childcare is essential for parents to be able to work. We will increase Universal Credit childcare support to help parents in work, with eligible parents receiving up to £737.06 in UC childcare support for each additional child beyond the first. We will also streamline the process for getting support with upfront childcare costs.
Changes to the childcare cost caps will occur during the 2026-27 financial year, subject to the laying of the relevant legislation and alterations to the UC service.
Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the relationship between any reduction in the provision of childcare and employment outcomes for single parents; and whether areas experiencing a reduction in childcare provision have seen any corresponding changes in single-parent labour market participation.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In 2026/27, we expect to provide over £9.5 billion for the early years entitlements, more than doubling annual public investment in the early years sector compared to 2023/24, as we have successfully rolled out the expansion of government-funded childcare for all working parents.
We have announced over £400 million of funding to create tens of thousands of places in new and expanded school-based nurseries to help ensure more children can access quality early education where it is needed and get the best start in life. The first phase of the programme is creating up to 6,000 new nursery places, with schools reporting over 5,000 having been made available from September 2025.
The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, we discuss what action they are taking to address those issues and, where needed, support the local authority with any specific requirements through our childcare sufficiency support contract.
Through our Best Start in Life strategy we will improve access to early years education and childcare, particularly for low-income families and those with additional needs. Parents may also be eligible for childcare support through Tax-Free Childcare or Universal Credit Childcare.
Asked by: Joe Robertson (Conservative - Isle of Wight East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of equity of access to to Start for Life services, including infant feeding, perinatal mental health and parent-infant relationship support across England.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Delivering integrated, joined-up health, education, and family support is at the heart of our ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children ever.
Healthy Babies, formerly Start for Life, funding is helping families during the critical 1,001 days, and as a result parents have said they are more confident in feeding their babies and have better perinatal mental health because of this support. We continue to assess how we can best support early-years service integration across the country and remain committed to working with delivery partners locally to achieve this.
Healthy Babies is one element of our broader commitment to supporting babies, children and families. From April 2026, Best Start Family Hubs will expand to every single local authority, backed by over £500 million to reach up to half a million more children and families. This funding will help all local authorities to integrate a range of statutory and non-statutory health and family services.
Best Start Family Hubs will form part of the architecture of the Neighbourhood Health Service. Through the shifts from hospital to community and treatment to prevention, we will further strengthen integration and join-up of services, helping to ensure that babies and their families can get the support they need, when and where they need it.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to ensure timely chid maintenance payments for single parents.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Children in separated and single-parent families are statistically more likely to experience poverty compared to those in non-separated families. Through both statutory and non-statutory arrangements, Child Maintenance payments currently help keep around 120,000 children out of poverty each year.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is committed to ensuring that parents meet their financial responsibilities in full and on time. Recent system changes enable us to identify at-risk cases earlier, allowing caseworkers to intervene promptly where partial payments are made and before payments stop altogether.
Where parents fail to meet their obligations, the CMS will not hesitate to use the full range of enforcement powers available. These powers are applied fairly and in the best interests of children and separated families.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of providing child benefits and child care support based on (1) joint household income and (2) parents individual earnings, given that currently a family of two parents earning £50,000 each may be eligible for a different level of support than a family on a single salary of £100,000.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The current rules base the High Income Child Benefit Charge on the income of one parent or carer. Basing the charge on household income, or the individual incomes of both parents or carers, would come at a significant fiscal cost if we were to ensure that no families lose out.
Regarding the 30 hours childcare offer, the £100,000 earnings threshold for eligibility is currently assessed on a per parent basis, rather than household income for two main reasons. First, aligning to the existing boundary in the tax system makes it easy for parents to understand what they are entitled to. Second, this policy approach means there is no incentive for the lower earner in a household to reduce their income, for example through working fewer hours, to be eligible.
Asked by: Susan Murray (Liberal Democrat - Mid Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the Child Maintenance Service Collect and Pay service fees on families.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is dedicated to ensuring parents meet their obligations to children, taking robust enforcement action against those who do not.
Cases in Collect & Pay represent the most difficult cases, as many of these have been unwilling to pay voluntarily or have not been compliant in a Direct Pay arrangement. Cases where the paying parent has missed payments or demonstrated behaviour that suggests they are unlikely to pay, can be put on the Collect and Pay service. Fees only apply to the Collect and Pay Service. A fee of 20% is added to what the paying parent needs to pay, while 4% is deducted from maintenance paid to receiving parents. The receiving parent charge is only applied from the maintenance that the Child Maintenance Service has successfully collected.
Fees were introduced in 2014, partly with the objective to encourage greater collaboration and more family-based arrangements rather than using a statutory service.
After Collect and Pay fees were introduced an assessment was carried out by the previous government and published in The Child Maintenance Reforms; 30 Month Review of charging.
In July 2024 the government consulted on the proposal for wider reform to consolidate the CMS into a single service type where the CMS monitors and transfers payments. The consultation Improving the collection and transfer of payments, also proposed a new fee structure of just 2% for receiving parents, deducted from maintenance received; 2% for compliant paying parents, on top of maintenance owed; and 20% for non-compliant paying parents, on top of maintenance owed.
Following consideration of public responses concerning fees and other proposals in the consultation, and subsequent ministerial decisions, next steps will be detailed in the Government Response, which will be published in due course.
Asked by: Sarah Gibson (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of Universal Credit provisions for single parent families.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Poverty Taskforce is working to publish a Child Poverty Strategy which will deliver lasting change. The Strategy will look at levers across four key themes of increasing incomes, including considering social security reforms, reducing essential costs, increasing financial resilience; and better local support especially in the early years.
Benefit rates are reviewed each year, increasing by 6.7% in April 2024 and by a further 1.7% from April 2025, in line with inflation. We have recently announced a Fair Repayment Rate on Universal Credit deductions will be introduced from April 2025, helping approximately 1.2 million households benefit by an average of £420 a year.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many single parent families are affected by the two-child limit for benefits by the gender of the parent.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In April 2024, the number of single parents on Universal Credit affected by the two-child policy, by gender, was as follows.
| Single parents household on Universal Credit affected by two-child policy (April 2024) |
Female | 201,000 |
Male | 5,000 |
Total | 206,000 |
Notes:
Asked by: Chris Webb (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the household benefit cap on single-parent families.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
No assessment has been made. Single-parent households can still receive benefits up to the value of gross earnings of around £25,700 or £30,300 in London. Where households require more support, they can approach their Local Authority, for help and guidance with housing costs. Delivering our manifesto commitment to tackle child poverty is an urgent priority for this Government, and the Ministerial Taskforce is continuing its urgent work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of Unaccompanied Children Seeking Asylum who were not in school in each of the last five years, broken down by gender.
Answered by Janet Daby
Information on the number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum who were not in school is not collected or held by the department. Data collected by the department on children not in school does not indicate whether children are asylum seekers.
The department published a response to the public call for evidence, ‘Improving support for children missing education’, in December 2024. This response outlines current best practice approaches and next steps for how local authorities, schools and others can be empowered to go further to identify and support children missing education (CME) and to tackle the pattern of children falling through the cracks. The response can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6749c6faebabe47136b3a25b/Children_missing_education_-_call_for_evidence_response.pdf.
The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, introduced on 17 December, includes proposals for compulsory Children Not in School registers in every local authority in England, to enable authorities to better identify all children not in school in their areas and, where these children are not receiving a safe, suitable education, to take action to support them. The department is also committed to introducing a single child identifier, so all children can get the right support from education, health and care services.
The department’s annual published children looked after data shows that only 4% of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) are girls and that 89% of all UASC are aged 16 and over.
All UASC will be looked after by their local authority. All state-funded schools are required to give relevant looked after and previously looked after children top priority for admission once their corporate parent, the local authority, applies for a place.
As looked after children, local authorities have the same duties to UASC as all other looked after children, which includes support received in school.
The government is committed to ensuring that all children, especially the most vulnerable in our society, are safe and have access to an excellent education. Where children are not on a school roll or receiving suitable education elsewhere, the department has issued statutory guidance for local authorities outlining their duty to make arrangements to identify and support into education all CME. The guidance specifically references that children of new migrant families may be at particular risk of missing education. This guidance can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66bf57a4dcb0757928e5bd39/Children_missing_education_guidance_-_August_2024.pdf.