Briefing

The chancellor has done the bare minimum that is needed to prevent faster rises in child poverty. There are 4.2 million children living in poverty in the UK today. Ensuring benefits catch up with inflation, and increasing local housing allowance (LHA), will come as welcome news to the millions of families on the lowest incomes who have been left worried sick as speculation about benefit cuts and freezes played out in the news. Increasing these benefits should never have been in doubt, and we urge the government to ensure benefit uprating is placed on a statutory footing to avoid this process being repeated in future years.

In his Autumn Statement, the chancellor should invest in children by increasing social security benefits – reducing child poverty immediately and leading to higher long-term economic growth, as well as improved education and health outcomes, including life expectancy.  

A paper exploring how we can build better systems to overcome barriers to work and opportunity, guarantee security, and uphold dignity.

Amid constant changes to our social security system, child benefit is a simple, predictable way to support families with the cost of raising a child

Our recommendations to the UK government in advance of the Autumn Statement.

Two-thirds of people sent a migration notice between November 2022 and March 2023 made a successful UC claim before their migration deadline. A further 5 per cent made a claim after their deadline had passed. And 28 per cent did not claim UC at all and had their legacy benefit payments terminated. We are concerned that a sizeable minority of claimants are falling through the gaps.

Tackling child poverty in Scotland is a priority for the Scottish government, and the government's policies are working to reduce child poverty. However more needs to be done to ensure Scotland meets it's legally binding child poverty targets. We have set out what the Scottish government's spending priorities should be to ensure child poverty targets are met. 

There is only one part of the school day that is means-tested – lunchtime. We believe that all school children should be offered a balanced and filling school meal each day without cost. But a third of school-age children in England (900,000) living in poverty miss out on free school meals.

A map showing the number of children living in households affected by the benefit cap between 2013 and 2023.