Kim Johnson

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam (Olivia Blake) on securing this important and timely debate. I say “timely”, because we have just heard from the Chancellor today a statement about her spending plans for the coming years, yet there was no significant mention of a strategy or funding to alleviate child poverty, aside from a partial extension of free school meals. This is after we were told that the Government would not agree to lift the two-child benefit cap that continues systematically to drive families into poverty every single week. We were promised a taskforce and a Government-endorsed strategy by spring. It is now June, and we are yet to hear a peep from the taskforce. Instead, we hear numerous rumours that the strategy report could be given to us as late as November and that, while the Prime Minister backs lifting the cap in full, his chief of staff is blocking it. As the MP for Liverpool Riverside, the most deprived constituency in the country, where one in two children are now living in poverty, it is disheartening to say the least that children living in poverty are so low down the list of political priorities for the first Labour Government in a generation. I am proud that Liverpool is a city of sanctuary. As a port city, we host some of the oldest diverse communities in Europe. We are a proud city of migrants—the world in one city. We cannot talk about child poverty in Liverpool without recognising that the children of migrants and asylum seekers are disproportionately living in poverty, especially those impacted by the no recourse to public funds condition. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that 1.5 million children in migrant families live in poverty, making up more than a third of the total number of children in poverty. More than half of the children living in families with no recourse to public funds live in poverty, and recent analysis by the IPPR has shown that those children also face a far higher risk of deep poverty. We know that child poverty is a major driver of life outcomes, from educational attainment to health and income levels. No child should have their opportunities limited by the circumstances they were born into. Our policymakers must take action to level the playing field and ensure that every child living in this country has the chance to thrive and achieve their potential. Will the Minister agree to go back to the Government and ensure that accurate and up-to-date data is provided on how many children, including British citizens, are affected by no recourse to public funds? Will he outline any analysis that the Government have done on how many children are in poverty as a direct result of it?