The Education and Work and Pensions Committees will take evidence from local government and charities working on the frontlines of the battle against child poverty about their experiences delivering the government’s child poverty strategy.
","secondaryDescription":"Representatives from Trussell, the English Football League, and Barnardo’s will be among the witnesses as MPs on both committees continue their joint inquiry, Realising potential, on the strategy’s delivery.
\r\nThe government projects that the strategy will lift 550,000 children out of poverty over 10 years and aims to give local authorities more autonomy over how they tackle the issue. But currently, over one in four children (26%) live in households with low incomes after housing costs, rising to nearly one in three in the West Midlands, and more than half in hardest-hit local authorities, Tower Hamlets and Hackney.
\r\nWitnesses are likely to be asked about the challenges they face in tackling child poverty as demand increases in the context of tight local authority budgets and the rising cost of living. This may include issues around funding and data sharing.
\r\nThe strategy points to a 9% reduction in core funding for councils between 2010 and 2025, which has hit preventative services and had a disproportionate impact in deprived areas. As part of it, the government is proposing to reform how it distributes funding, and establishing new pots like the Better Futures Fund and the Crisis and Resilience Fund.
\r\nAlthough scrapping the two-child limit is expected to lift 450,000 children above the poverty line, witnesses to an earlier session of the inquiry told the committees that while this would stop further rises in the proportion of poverty-afflicted children, it would not be enough to significantly reduce child poverty beyond this.
\r\nMPs on the committees are also likely to ask whether the ambition of the strategy will meet the needs of children from all backgrounds, including those with no recourse to public funds, children in lone parent families, and those who have been in the care system.
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