My Lords, it is a real pleasure to introduce this debate on the first UK-wide child poverty strategy, and strategy for England, since 2010, during which time child poverty, particularly deep child poverty, has worsened. I am grateful to the noble Lords taking part, and I hope that the debate will provide an opportunity to highlight some of the strategy’s strengths and to suggest where it might go further in tackling child poverty effectively.
One of the strategy’s great strengths has been the taskforce’s wide engagement with stakeholders, including, in particular, parents and children with experience of poverty. Four of those parents, who were involved in the Changing Realities participatory project, said in the foreword:
“We have experienced genuine listening and collaboration, and it has been encouraging to feel that our lived experience can and should influence policy solutions”.
There is a commitment to continuing this engagement as part of the strategy’s evaluation and development, which I will return to.
Although the strategy document itself did not mention children’s rights, a subsequent child rights impact assessment, published alongside a child-friendly version of the strategy, emphasises:
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate. It is very timely in recognising the ongoing challenges that families in this country face, including issues around inflation, the reduction in the number of jobs available and the increase in unemployment, as well as the need to tackle the strategic challenges around NEETs. While we are talking about children today, the increase in youth employment really worries me about the future of our country.
I agree with the noble Baroness on one issue, and that is childcare. I lost this argument with other Ministers when I was in government, but we need to look very carefully to try to increase significantly the number of child carers—not necessarily nurseries—to help people get into and stay in work, and to expand the number of hours they have. It is all well and good having 38 weeks a year when the schools are sitting, but that does not help when someone still has that job in the summer or over Christmas. They are the sort of strategic challenges that we need to face.
I am very proud of my three years at the DWP. Working with my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott, we did a lot of good to try to help people get out of poverty. One of the battles I had was about the definition of poverty. The British Social Attitudes survey is very clear that people do not agree that getting 60% of the median income automatically means that someone is poor—as the noble Baroness said, they prefer the concept of deeper poverty. Lots of our big organisations will continue to try to use relative poverty as the only way to consider the definition. I was slightly bemused that, during Covid, relative poverty fell—it did so because it is a statistic—but it did not reflect how people felt.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on securing the debate and thank her for her tireless work in addressing child poverty. Like many others, I welcomed the publication of the Government’s child poverty strategy and was delighted by the Government’s decision to abolish the two-child limit on universal credit. Like others, I felt that the Government missed the opportunity to deliver some quick wins—measures that would not require legislation yet would make a tangible difference to children’s lives.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, already mentioned a number of these measures, but I wish to focus on just one: auto-enrolment for free school meals. On the face of it, it is a very modest proposal, yet it would have profound positive consequences for some of the disadvantaged children in the country. Around 250,000 children in England who are eligible for free school meals are not enrolled to receive it. That is approximately one in 10 of all those who should be benefiting from this scheme; in the north-east, it is one in five.
The entitlement exists, but it is not making its full potential impact. There is a substantial body of evidence, including a major cost-benefit analysis conducted by PwC for impacts on urban health, which demonstrated that free school meals improve concentration in the classroom, boost attendance, raise attainment and improve long-term health outcomes. Yet, some of the children most in need of this benefit are missing out. This is because under the present system, families must apply for free school meals. They must navigate forms, eligibility checks and, in many local authorities, repeat the process each time circumstances change. This creates administrative barriers, stigma and confusion, particularly for parents with limited digital access, for those for whom English is an additional language or for families in unstable or temporary accommodation.
My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Lister for securing this vital debate. The Government’s strategy on child poverty should inspire the nation. It has mobilised us all in common cause around what is clearly the fight of our lives: to finally break the link between economic background and life chances, and in so doing, to lift our children out of the bleak, desperate world of crushing poverty, thereby giving them faith in the future.
The causes of 21st-century child poverty have been well documented. There has been much focus, and rightly so, on financial inputs and outputs that are, respectively, plummeting income and rising costs. However, amid the flurry of these high-impact interventions and initiatives that emerge from the child poverty strategy, there remains one of the most potent levers of all at our disposal to pull as vigorously as we can, and urgently so, and that is the role of inspired schools and inspiring teachers.
There is a simple formula for us to consider in this debate. Of all the levers at our disposal, education remains the single most effective way to genuinely attack that toxic link between background and success, and we know that, at the heart of that, are the heroes and heroines of the front line: our teachers. We know that it is teachers who are the most important in-school factor in improving outcomes for children, especially our poorest children.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for bringing forward this important debate.
Few issues test the conscience more directly than child poverty. Across the UK today, around 4.5 million children are growing up in poverty. In Wales, around 31% of children are living in relative poverty and 26% of children in working households are living in poverty. These are not just statistics; they represent children going without essentials, families under constant pressure, and opportunities limited before life has properly begun.
I speak about this not only as a Member of this House and a campaigner but from personal experience. I grew up in poverty on a council estate in Wales, and during that time I was also a young carer. I know what it means to take on complex responsibility early, to balance care with education and to live with the quiet strain that so often accompanies hardship at home. That experience simply does not pass. It shapes your outlook, your opportunities and your sense of what lies ahead.
Child poverty is not inevitable; it is a result of political choices, and it can be changed by political choices, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. That is why I want to focus on the approach being taken by the new Plaid Cymru-led Welsh Government, who have made a clear and deliberate decision to prioritise tackling child poverty. That commitment will soon be reflected in the draft Budget to be laid next week, because, if we are serious about addressing poverty, it must be reflected not only in words but in the allocation of resources.
I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for securing this debate. She talked about a “strong start” and my comments come in that context.
This is an important debate that speaks to what it means to be Labour: a determination to lift the most vulnerable children in the most difficult circumstances and to give all children, especially the most disadvantaged, the best possible start in life. The child poverty strategy is a strong and serious piece of work. It recognises the complexity of the challenges facing families and the need for a cross-governmental response, and I welcome its intent. If I may, however, I shall focus on an emerging dimension of child poverty that we cannot afford to overlook: the differing outcomes for boys and girls, even when they experience the same early disadvantage. I think the evidence is becoming clear that child poverty is not a uniform experience. It is shaped not only by low income, poor housing and food insecurity, but by gender, where different developmental patterns, expectations and responses to disadvantage begin to drive very different outcomes.
When we look closely, we see that while poverty harms all children, boys are often more likely to experience its most damaging and long-term consequences. Education provides the clearest examples. Boys from low-income households arrive at school less ready to learn, fall behind early and leave with fewer and lower qualifications than girls facing the same disadvantages. They are also twice as likely to be permanently excluded. This matters. When boys disengage early, the consequences cascade: lower attainment, reduced employment prospects and a far greater risk of long-term disadvantage. Exclusion is not just a disciplinary response; it is too often a poverty pathway.
We already have some insight into where this leads. Alan Milburn’s excellent interim report on young people and work describes the scale of the NEET problem and amplifies how this is not just a labour market issue but a deeper disengagement from education, work and the structures that support adult life. Within that, there is a clear and growing gender dimension. Some boys face a double disadvantage, being both poor and male. I am deeply concerned about this. I worry for the boys and young men whose life chances are constrained by that compounded disadvantage. I worry for their families too, who support them often without the tools to help. I also worry for our society, because the consequences extend beyond the individuals, their lost potential, their growing alienation and the weakening of our social fabric. We are seeing the growing consequences all around us. We must also recognise the role of social media. While it affects all young people, young boys are being drawn towards content that amplifies grievance, promotes damaging models of masculinity and often creates a false sense of belonging where one should not be happening.
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for securing this important debate; she has spent decades making poverty visible when others preferred not to look. I declare my interest as executive director of Impact on Urban Health, a health equity funder. We fund organisations that work with children, such as Changing Realities, the Child Poverty Action Group and Save the Children. However, I am speaking today in a personal capacity.
Tackling child poverty and addressing its effects has been at the root of so much of my work over the last two decades. For much of that time, it has felt like trying to stop the tide going out. In my work, I have seen the poor-quality temporary accommodation that families get stuck in, to great expense for local authorities. I have seen the poverty that schools try their best to paper over, because the levels of need are such a barrier to learning.
I have heard stories of how families have unexpectedly found themselves underemployed and on universal credit. The numbers in this strategy bear that out. A child eligible for free school meals is already five months behind by the time they start school. One in four children from the poorest families gets five good GCSEs—the figure is three in four for children from the richest families.
In that context, I welcome this strategy. It is cross-government in design, it was built with families, and it has great policy content. Removing the two-child limit, as other noble Lords have said, is the most effective intervention the Government could have made to tackle child poverty. Extending free school meals to families on universal credit matters too, as do increases in the national living wage and rates of universal credit.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Babudu, and I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for securing this very important debate.
I want to focus my remarks on what I know best: health. Child poverty is not simply a social issue; it is a public health crisis. Unless we address it, we will continue to pay the price for decades to come in poorer health, greater inequality and rising demands on our NHS.
As we have already heard, 31% of children in the UK are living in relative poverty after housing costs. In a classroom of 30 children, that is 10 children whose future health is already being shaped not by their talents, aspirations or potential but by the circumstances into which they were born.
Indeed, the impact of poverty on health begins even before birth. As a doctor, I find the evidence compelling. We know that the intrauterine environment plays a profound role in determining future health. The pioneering work of Professor David Barker of Southampton demonstrated that poor nutrition and deprivation during pregnancy can programme the developing foetus in ways that increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and hypertension in adult life. In other words, poverty leaves a biological imprint before a child has even taken their first breath.
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“From the outset, development of the strategy has been guided by a children’s rights approach”,
and that this will continue by
“involving children in monitoring its impact”,
which is very welcome.
Another very positive aspect of the strategy document is its language and tone. It makes a very strong case for action on child poverty, starting with the Prime Minister’s foreword, setting out both the moral case and its importance as an economic and social investment in our future. Child poverty costs us, as a society. Moreover, the document recognises the key role played by social security and, indeed, uses that term rather than what has become the pejorative language of “welfare”. The tone is a far cry from the dominant false narrative of a “ballooning” welfare budget. A companion evidence pack spells out how previous cuts mean that basic benefit levels are worth “significantly less” than in 2010-11, and how this has contributed to the worsening of child poverty.
This lays the ground for the most important and welcome policy shift: the total abolition of the heinous two-child limit, which I will not dwell on because we have already debated it, other than to remind noble Lords that its abolition represents the single most effective means of reducing child poverty at a stroke, supported by modest real increases in the universal credit standard allowance for the rest of this Parliament. According to the latest published official estimate, abolition of the limit will reduce the number of children in poverty by 550,000 by 2030, and as many as 7.1 million children will be in gaining households, of whom 1.4 million are in deep material poverty.
Nevertheless, official projections suggest that there will still be around 4 million children—29% of all children—in poverty at the end of this Parliament, and Barnardo’s warns that the depth and severity of poverty could worsen further. The challenge facing the Government is a measure of the dire situation inherited from the previous Government. As the Resolution Foundation warns, the strategy is still working against economic forces and other policy choices that could weaken its impact.
One such policy choice is the retention of the benefit cap, which is a key driver of deep poverty, especially among single-parent families. I know that removal of the cap is not government policy, even though evidence suggests its impact on employment has been pretty minimal, while the hardship caused is considerable. However, at the very least, I ask, yet again, for them to consider ways of mitigating its impact, including annual uprating of the threshold limits. According to CPAG, of which I am honorary president, if they had been uprated in line with inflation since 2016, they would be 26% higher now.
The other main social security omission is the failure to end the freeze on housing allowance, which aggravates poverty among families living in the private rented sector. More generally, there is no hint of the further investment in social security that is needed if it is to provide for a decent life, genuine security and a healthy diet, as argued by the Food Foundation. Yet analysis suggests that, as the record of the last Labour Government shows:
“We can only get significant and lasting reductions in child poverty by investing in our social security system”.
The same analysis, published by CASE at the LSE, also shows that
“changes in parental employment, whilst important, will never deliver change to child poverty rates on the scale we need to see”.
We should remember that nearly three-quarters of children in poverty live in working households. Certainly, there are reforms that could ensure that paid work is more effective in tackling child poverty, as recent analysis by Action for Children and the IPPR demonstrates. However, it will never be the silver bullet that some politicians suggest.
One such reform that the Government are very aware of is childcare, which is again of particular importance to single-parent families. The IPPR and Action for Children research underlined just how important childcare is to both finding and progressing in paid work, especially for mothers, whose poverty is still inextricably linked to that of their children. Childcare is an important element in the holistic approach taken by the strategy.
Other important elements include action on homelessness and the use of bed and breakfast accommodation; reduction in some of the costs of education—which is crucial if every child is to achieve and thrive at school—including the very welcome extension of free school meals; improved maintenance provisions; and strengthened local services, especially those prioritising prevention. These are aimed as much at reducing the impact of child poverty as its incidence but are nevertheless welcome.
Here, I wish attention could have been paid to how services are delivered, as the experience of poverty is worsened when service users feel they are not treated with dignity and respect, thereby worsening the stigma which continues to hurt people living in poverty. This is something that a human rights approach to poverty would address, as recognised in Scotland and Wales. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, in warmly welcoming the strategy, argues that its
“implementation would be significantly strengthened by taking a human rights based approach”.
The strategy recognises the important role played by local authorities, but in the words of Resolve Poverty:
“It will need to give greater consideration to how localities in England will be supported to develop and embed strong strategic responses to poverty and in ensuring that all localities are properly resourced and supported to deliver strategic anti-poverty activity”.
It would like to see
“the introduction of a requirement on localities to develop anti-poverty strategies”.
Another hole in the strategy concerns migrant children in families with no recourse to public funds, which includes child benefit, the key bedrock of support for children. While its explicit recognition of this group of children and commitment to ensuring
“they receive the support they require, regardless of their immigration status”
are very welcome, it has ignored calls for easing the application of the NRPF rule, which can spell abject poverty for much of a child’s childhood. Moreover, proposed reforms to the asylum and settlement rules are likely to worsen poverty among migrant children, already at disproportionate risk of poverty. Sarah, a refugee parent, in a recent blog warns that any further limit on support for refugees
“would be devastating for my family”.
I look forward to the promised baseline report, which will give more detail about implementation and monitoring, elaborating on what looks like a well thought out monitoring and evaluation framework. I do not know how much my noble friend can say about that today, but could we perhaps have a few hints? I was very encouraged by the written evidence from the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions to the select committee inquiry, which stated the Government have
“committed to maintain a core, central child poverty team, with cross-government oversight by Ministers”.
That was not my original understanding, and I and others were a bit worried about whether future responsibility lay just with the DWP, so I wonder whether my noble friend could say more about this.
I hope the baseline report will say something about targets, or at least milestones, in the name of accountability and transparency, as called for by a wide range of organisations. That would be a way of demonstrating to the electorate the Government’s intent and their belief in the strategy, a point that I had hoped the noble Lord, Lord Bird, would be able to expand on—but he has unfortunately not got to his place, so he will not be able to.
With regard to monitoring, there was an exchange between the chair of the Social Mobility Commission and the Work and Pensions and Education Select Committees in an oral evidence session which reminded me that the Social Mobility Commission started life as the Child Poverty Commission. This made me think that perhaps the resurrection of the latter, with input from those with lived experience, would be the ideal independent body to monitor the strategy, with its reports published and debated annually in Parliament. I would welcome my noble friend’s thoughts on that.
The strategy document describes it as just
“the first step on our road to ending child poverty”,
emphasised by the Education Secretary, who presented it to the Commons as “a strong start”. This debate provides an opportunity to think about further steps—how we best build on that strong start. There is a lot of talk in politics at present about the need for hope, which we heard more of in the first debate today, particularly when so many are struggling with the cost of living crisis. When I hear senior Ministers talking about tackling child poverty as this Government’s moral mission, it gives me hope. More importantly, it offers hope to the millions of children and parents who remain in poverty, despite the measures already taken by the Government.
I will finish with more words from the foreword from the parents involved in Changing Realities:
“This strategy begins the work of lifting the weight of poverty off the shoulders of millions of families. With some of the changes, families like ours may start to breathe again. Not just survive but live with dignity. We’d all like to feel secure knowing that if something breaks, or a bill goes up, we won’t be pushed into crisis. More than anything, we want our children to have opportunities without us constantly having to say ‘no, not this time’ … But we must not get complacent and stop there. All of us owe it to the children who are relying on decision makers to put them first … and ensure we are doing everything we can to propel our children into a future filled with hope and not despair”.
I beg to move.
As we learned in the message that today’s DWP Secretary of State exchanged with Lord Mandelson—I think that is still what he is called—too many MPs are asking what taxes can be put up to pay for more benefits for others. He said that they are asking the wrong questions, and he was right to do so. That is why I was somewhat concerned about the child poverty strategy, as it seemed to continue to focus on how more cash benefits or other benefits would address the statistical change but not the strategic change.
I think that 60% of the median income last year was £22,370. It is no surprise that a lot more single-parent homes are in relative poverty. We had a debate the other week about child maintenance; I do not want to rehearse all that, but I will continue to make one plea. For those parents—mainly men—who are not contributing to their children’s income, because they are either on benefits or just not paying anything, we need to make sure that they are a top priority in their local job centre when it comes to getting a job. I really need to stress that. In the latest British Social Attitudes survey, only 29% of the population was happy to increase taxes in order to do that, yet that is exactly what has happened with removing the two-child benefit cap.
I am conscious that, for many Peers, this has been a long-term campaign, and I accept that they disagreed with what we did. But we did that with a purpose of reflecting that the welfare system is intended to be a hand-up and to support people desperately in need. Yet, we are now in a situation where, due to other factors, everybody on universal credit who has children gets free school meals. That is difficult when there are 220,000 households with children on universal credit are actually getting over £40,000 in household income. It is difficult when the warm home discount has been expanded to every recipient of universal credit. It actually means that the smaller cohort that used to get the money, using more energy and more with children, now get less discount in cash terms as a consequence.
There are all these little changes start to happen, and all these extra things mean that, as used to happen with tax credits, you would be almost insane to work a minute more than 16 hours per week, unless you work full-time, because you would lose money. Now, families are, very carefully and perfectly rationally, adjusting their hours and not moving to full-time work, because they will lose out. These are strategic problems that we need to face as a country.
Finally, debt is a real challenge. I give credit to John Glen in the last Government, who introduced the breathing space approach. It was a good initiative, and I hope that it gets extended even further. One thing that happened in the child poverty strategy is that debt advice will be included in neighbourhood health as an approach to helping people. In the recently published framework, there is no mention of debt advice services to be commissioned. I hope that the Minister can go back to health and think about that.
I think that this House is united that we desperately want fewer children in poverty—ideally, we want no child in poverty but, given those statistics, there almost certainly will be. But let us do our best to make sure that every child has the best opportunity going forward.
I previously spoke in your Lordships’ House about the poverty-shame nexus—a mutually reinforcing relationship between material hardship and the emotional experience of shame. This is particularly relevant as, time and again, researchers have found that shame and stigma are among the biggest barriers that prevent parents from applying for free school meals.
This is not only a question of feeding hungry children, though that alone would be a good enough reason to introduce it. Free school meal eligibility is the gateway to pupil-premium funding, currently worth £1,515 per eligible primary school pupil and £1,075 at secondary level. When five local authorities introduced auto-enrolment in October 2023, they identified more than 2,500 additional eligible children in their first cohorts, with opt-out rates of less than 1%.
The question arises: why, if local authorities have piloted this measure, does it now require government action? Last year, the charity Feeding Britain convened a working group of 29 local authorities to examine this question. I commend its report to the Minister. In brief, however, this approach reaches only those families who already engage with their local authority for other welfare support, which, again, because of stigma, not all do.
Most importantly, the managed migration of families from legacy benefits on to universal credit will, over the next few years, substantially reduce the number of families applying to local authorities for housing benefit and similar payments, so the window of opportunity for local authorities to introduce auto-enrolment is closing. The working group’s proposal, which I commend to the House, is to build automatic registration into universal credit itself, extending the sort of mechanism that already exists for council tax support and for the NHS Healthy Start scheme.
I know that this Government are committed to social mobility, and education is at the heart of achieving this. Can the Minister explain, therefore, why this measure—one which would help direct resources more accurately to schools serving disadvantaged children, with no changes required to the pupil premium framework—was not included in the child poverty strategy?
In that regard, we would do well to reflect on a report published yesterday by Teach First, where I am proud to serve as a trustee. Entitled Class Dismissed, this new policy report shines a light on what has come to be termed “the persistently disadvantaged”—that is, deep poverty. That term is defined in simple ways. Persistently disadvantaged children are those who spend 80% of their school life eligible for free school meals. Often these proxy measures and technical definitions can seem remote, but, to be clear, that is more than 1 million children living in homes where often annual family income does not allow for the covering of the cost of basic essentials throughout the vast majority of a child’s life.
For these children, the lifecycle becomes painfully vicious. The report showed that, by the time they reach GCSE, the poorest children are nearly two years behind their non-disadvantaged peers in learning. Twenty-five per cent of the deeply poor, the persistently disadvantaged, will not be in post-16 education or training. From there, it is a steady decline, with meagre employment opportunities and lower earnings—and so it goes on. These bleak outcomes are not only the catastrophic consequences of child poverty but one of the clearest predictors of whether such poverty recurs in the next generation of children: the ultimate vicious cycle.
Yet we learned something else from the Teach First report that serves to inform this debate. These disastrous life outcomes for the persistently disadvantaged—the deeply poor—are not, and do not have to be, inevitable. We have seen pockets of real breakthrough, where strong school leaders and high-quality teaching can dramatically improve outcomes for our poorest children. These are schools which are not just feeding hungry children, as they do, not just buying them uniforms from their own school budgets, as they do, but vitally, and perhaps above all, creating for the deeply poor, the persistently disadvantaged, real beacons of hope, real aspiration, and a genuine sense—no cliché intended—that the opportunities which these children will pass to their own children will be immeasurably better than the life chances given to them. The cycle can be broken. Teachers, inspired and inspiring, can do that. They are doing it every day in classrooms up and down the country.
The Government have made one thing abundantly clear: they are absolutely determined to break the link between economic background and opportunity, and schools can be at the heart of that national mission. Yet we know from this report, too, and elsewhere, that schools serving the poorest communities find recruitment and retention of teachers exceptionally difficult. If we do not give that tangible attention, we will weaken one of the strongest levers at our disposal, which can lift children out of poverty permanently.
So, with that in mind, I hope my noble friend the Minister agrees that placing schools and teachers at the heart of our child poverty strategy gives us a fighting chance of breaking the cycle. It does not have to be an inevitable downward one.
This debate is clearly at times about financial allocation and definitely about policy choices. But, above all, it goes to the very heart of the society we wish to be and, in that sense, it is nothing short of a moral imperative.
At the heart of this approach are practical, targeted policies designed to ease pressure on families and give every child the best possible start in life. One such policy proposed is the Cynnal payment, drawing inspiration from the Scottish child payment. We have seen in Scotland that direct financial support can reduce poverty and improve outcomes for children. A similar approach in Wales has the potential to provide real stability and dignity for families who need it most. I ask the Minister whether His Majesty’s Government will support the Welsh Government in the delivery of the Cynnal payment.
Alongside this is a transformative commitment on childcare. Plaid Cymru has announced an initial £55 million investment to expand childcare provision, enabling thousands more two year-olds to access funded childcare. This is the first step towards an ambition at the end of the term of year-round support, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey: year-round universal free childcare from nine months, which at full rollout would be the most generous childcare offer anywhere in the UK.
This matters profoundly. Childcare costs in Wales are among the highest in the UK, forcing many parents, particularly mothers, to reduce working hours or leave the labour market altogether. Expanding affordable childcare is therefore both a social and an economic policy. It supports parents back into work, strengthens household incomes and improves outcomes for children. It is, in short, about breaking the cycles of poverty before they become entrenched.
However, while action in Wales is essential, we must also recognise the limits of devolved powers. Many of the most significant levers, especially welfare, taxation and employment policy, remain His Majesty’s Government’s responsibility, so I shall ask the Minister a number of questions. First, what steps are the Government taking to support the creation of higher-paid, more secure jobs in parts of Wales where low pay remains persistent? Secondly, what assessment has been made of the impact of UK-wide welfare policies on poverty levels in Wales, and what consideration is given to reforms that would better support low-income families? Thirdly, how do the Government intend to work in genuine partnership with the devolved Administrations, so that action taken in all parts of the UK is reinforced and not constrained by decisions made here when certain powers overlap.
Tackling child poverty requires action at every level of government. It demands investment, co-ordination and, above all, political will and prioritisation, but it also demands something more fundamental: that we recognise the lived reality behind the figures and act with the urgency that those lives deserve, because every child in every corner of these isles deserves not just the chance to get by but the chance to thrive.
This must be not a partisan endeavour but a shared mission across this House and beyond. We have a responsibility to work together constructively and with purpose to ensure that no child is left behind. If we truly believe that, we must be willing to match our words with action and resources until no child’s future is defined by the circumstances of their birth.
This brings me to my central point. If outcomes differ, our response must evolve. A child poverty strategy that treats children as a uniform group risks missing those who are falling furthest behind. Equality of intention does not guarantee equality of outcome. We need a more targeted, evidence-based approach. That means recognising early literacy gaps and providing focused support for boys who fall behind in reading and communication. It means understanding why boys are more likely to be excluded, and intervening earlier, keeping them within the school system that best protects them. It means creating clearer and more engaging pathways into skills, training and employment—routes that connect them with those young men who are currently drifting away from that opportunity. It also means recognising the importance of positive male role models.
For many boys growing up in poverty, consistent male presence in family, school and communities is limited. Where that absence exists, it matters. I grew up without knowing my father, so I know how difficult it is to talk about this subject, but it is incredibly important that we do. Boys benefit from seeing positive, stable examples of adulthood—men who model responsibility, resilience and constructive engagement with work and society. Where else will they learn how to be a man?
This is not about creating division, nor is it about diminishing the progress needed for young girls and young women; it is about recognising where child poverty is deepest and responding with clarity and purpose. A strategy that works for most children but fails the most vulnerable boys is not yet a strategy that works. If we are serious about social justice, which I know we are, we must be serious about these outcomes. I want every boy, however difficult their start in life, to grow up in a country that sees them, nurtures them and helps them flourish. We cannot afford to look away from this. I ask the Minister to consider my thoughts when she responds.
There are two less highlighted parts of this strategy that I want to name, because they point to things the Government are quietly getting right. The first is a plan to draw in private and social investment alongside public spending. Public money will not be enough. The Better Futures Fund has great potential: government paying for social outcomes, not activities, and using that commitment to pull in capital that would otherwise sit on the sidelines. It is already happening in Bristol, helping to finance affordable housing. We need more of these innovative solutions.
The second part is the commitment, repeated in the Child Poverty Strategy, to commence the socio-economic duty under Section 1 of the Equality Act. Nearly 16 years on from that Act’s commencement, it is beyond time for this duty to commence. I hope the Government can set a date for its commencement soon.
There are three areas where the strategy can and should go further. The first is binding targets. Child Poverty Action Group and Save the Children conducted research, funded by Impact on Urban Health, with 40 practitioners to help inform the strategy. On targets, those practitioners were unanimous. Binding targets matter not because they are magic but because, when there is no well-understood target to hit, it is easier for departments to deprioritise. With the baseline report on child poverty levels due this summer, now is a great moment to change that.
The second area is the benefit cap. The two-child limit removal is welcome, but the cap undermines it. The Government’s own impact assessment estimates that around 70,000 families subject to the benefit cap will see little or no gain from the two-child limit removal. The cap bears down on those in deepest poverty, especially sole-parent families, who make up nearly 70% of capped households. These are not people who can easily work more hours to escape it. They are often sole carers, many with young children. For them, the cap is not an incentive but a trap.
I have similar concern that the local housing allowance, which has long not kept up with the cost of housing in several cities and is currently frozen until 2027, will undermine the Government’s child poverty reduction ambitions, given that 1.7 million children living in poverty live in the private rented sector. I had planned to flag a concern about the child poverty unit’s closure and replacement by a team within the DWP, but it would be great if the Minister could clarify whether that will sit more centrally. Where accountability sits determines whether a cross-government strategy holds or quietly fractures. Scotland put its child poverty Act through its Parliament and set up a statutory independent commission to monitor delivery. That difference, if it exists, creates a risk.
This strategy was built in the right way: across government, with families, and taking evidence seriously. I want to see it delivered in the same way. That means targets set this summer, against which any of us can measure progress. It means a co-ordination function with real authority; and it means closing gaps like the benefit cap, the local housing allowance freeze and the socio-economic duty—still to commence—that will otherwise risk making the strategy land well short of what it could achieve.
In fact, the first chapter of a child’s health story is written before conception, through the physical and metabolic health of parents. Children born into poverty are more likely to be born with low birth weight. They are less likely to survive their first year of life. As they grow, they face higher rates of asthma, chronic illness, developmental delay and poor mental health. Nearly one in five children are not meeting their expected developmental milestones by the age of two. These outcomes are not inevitable. They are preventable, because they are the predicted consequences of deprivation.
What is striking, both from clinical practice and evidence, is how clearly the pathway runs from wealth to health. When families have sufficient resources, children are healthier. When families are poor, children are sicker. Poverty and ill health reinforce one another. It is a vicious cycle.
The mechanisms are well understood. Housing sits at the top of the list. New data reveals that 104 children in England died between April 2019 and December 2024 with temporary accommodation identified as a contributing factor to their ill health or death, and 76 of those children were under the age of one. These are not simply housing statistics; they are the conditions in which children’s brains and bodies are developing.
I therefore welcome the Government’s commitment to tackling child poverty with their strategy, focusing on economic growth, the expansion of free school meals and breakfast provision, Best Start family hubs, and measures to increase the supply of social housing.
The forthcoming 10-year health plan presents an important opportunity to narrow health inequalities. Community health hubs could become a cornerstone of prevention. But they must be properly staffed, accessible, and equipped not only to diagnose illness but to support well-being, early intervention and family resilience, and they must take the needs of local communities into account.
If we truly wish to build a healthier nation, we must recognise a simple truth: child poverty today becomes adult illness tomorrow. Every child growing up in poverty represents not only a failure of opportunity but a future health inequality waiting to happen. The most effective preventive medicine we can offer is not found in a hospital or clinic, or on a prescription. It is ensuring that every child has enough food to eat, a warm home to live in, and the opportunity to thrive.
Tackling child poverty is not only a moral imperative; it is one of the most powerful health interventions available to us. If today’s child poverty is tomorrow’s adult illness, tackling poverty is one of the most powerful forms of prevention. I therefore ask my noble friend the Minister to urge the Government to place that principle at the heart of their strategy and to work with DHSC.