I believe it is vital the Government works to support those in need so please be assured that I will always stand up for my constituents when pressing the Government on important issues including support for childcare.
While I am firmly committed to supporting families, I am clear that the best way to reduce child poverty centres on clear evidence - parental employment is proven to substantially reduce the risk of poverty. I therefore call on the Labour Government to ensure they help parents into work as the best way to ensure parents can support their households.
I also believe more needs to be done to ensure our welfare system reflects the modern world of work, helps people into the jobs that are right for them and is set on a sustainable path for the taxpayer. The welfare system has to be balanced between providing strong work incentives and support for those who need it alongside fairness to the taxpayer and working families. Currently, welfare costs are spiralling out of control.
Mims Davies MP Statement on Welfare Reform | Mims Davies
The rules on welfare entitlement for families with more than two children is a part of that important balance of fairness and support- the historic benefits structure, which adjusted automatically to family size, was unsustainable as well as unfair to many working families who do not see their incomes rise when they choose to have more children. Moreover, recent statistics show that 78 per cent of families on Universal Credit (UC) had fewer than three children.
I welcome support is provided through Child Tax Credit and UC for a maximum of two children and understand that the same policy does not apply to the additional financial help available for childcare costs, passported benefits (for example, free school meals), additional support for any disabled children or Child Benefit.
I do recognise some people are not able to make choices about the number of children in their family, and I welcome the full support for third and subsequent children born after April 2017 in certain circumstances. This includes children cared for by family or close friends under kinship care arrangements, children adopted from local authority care, and multiple births.
I am proud of the record of the previous Government on child poverty more generally, which invested up to £40 million through its National School Breakfast Programme, to support up to 2,700 schools in disadvantaged areas to provide nutritious breakfasts. It expanded the eligibility to more groups of children than any Government in the past 50 years, meaning thousands of children from low-income families are now supported. It also doubled the number of children receiving free school meals between 2010 and 2024, having extended eligibility several times to more groups of children. As a result, around 2 million pupils are eligible for and claim a free school meal, saving families over £480 a year for each child.
I hope the current Government continues the hard work already started in this area and finds more ways we can ensure fairness within the welfare system whilst also ensuring a quality standard of life for families across the United Kingdom.
As the best way to lift children out of child poverty is through growing up in a working household, it is vital the Labour Government ensures the welfare system supports people into work to reduce child poverty further.
It would seem however that the Government's recently announced welfare reforms are entirely at odds with this goal. The Government's own impact assessment has said that as many as 50,000 children will be forced into absolute poverty as a direct result of their latest changes, all while planning to save less than £5 billion when the welfare bill is forecast to rise to over £100 billion in the next few years. I would seriously question what the Government is hoping to achieve with these reforms, which will neither stop more children falling into poverty nor make any significant savings in government spending.
I understand that the Child Poverty Strategy is due to be published later this year; I shall scrutinise this strategy in further detail once it has been published, and will continue to hold the Government to account on their plans to reduce child poverty.
