Oeddech chi'n golygu to child benefit can?
Lord Sikka: To ask His Majesty's Government what research they have carried out, if any, to ascertain the effect of the two-child benefit cap on the lives of the affected children and their families.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: .... I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, for her long service in local government. It is appropriate to acknowledge the time she spent in local government. She now gives us the benefit of her knowledge and skills in this House, and we are all the better for that. I have listened with great interest to many ideas promulgated today, particularly about a co-ordinated approach...
Evelyn Tweed: ...recently quoted in the New Statesman as saying that Holyrood had been largely “a social policy parliament” and that he wanted to correct that. Given that it is clear that social security and benefit uptake are a low priority for the Labour leadership, can the cabinet secretary provide an assurance that, unlike Westminster, Holyrood will continue to challenge austerity and cruel...
Shirley-Anne Somerville: ...and downs, and it is vital for the wellbeing of any society. For too long, the Westminster approach to social security has been to provide inadequate levels of financial support, using arbitrary caps and limits to reduce the support that is available to children and families, and to unfairly stigmatise the most vulnerable people. The reckless and cruel decision making at Westminster can be...
Nuala McAllister: ...will try to keep my remarks short, but there are a number of areas on which I want to speak in particular as health spokesperson for Alliance and as a member of the Policing Board, as well as in my capacity as an Alliance MLA. I recognise that today's debate is not a vision for the future, and we must be clear on that when we make our representations to the public. None of us in the...
Jo Churchill: The Government is committed to reducing poverty, including child poverty, and supporting low-income families. We will spend around £276bn through the welfare system in Great Britain in 2023/24 including around £124bn on people of working age and children. Working age benefits will increase by 6.7% from April 2024, subject to Parliamentary approval, following a 10.1% increase in 2023/24....
Paul Givan: ...of targeted measures aimed at addressing the various outcomes that we want to achieve and which Members have all raised. I am well aware of the challenges that many parts of the early learning and childcare sector face in terms of their sustainability and difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff. I look forward to meeting parents, early learning and childcare providers, with other...
Shirley-Anne Somerville: ...here in Scotland, but that is happening amid a worsening fog of Westminster austerity. We have a contract with the people of Scotland, but that contract does not exist when it comes to reserved benefits. We could do so much more if we were not held back by, for example, the fact that universal credit is failing to support the people that it should be there for—it does not provide for...
...from the UK Government through the social security block grant; notes that this investment includes the Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods, as well as the landmark, and extended, Scottish Child Payment, which is estimated to lift 50,000 children out of relative poverty in 2024; recognises that £614 million of Scotland-only benefits are being delivered in 2024-25, which is support that...
David Linden: Rather than deal with the known policy failures within the benefits system, the Government seem to be more focused on penalising people through, for example, the two-child cap. Last week, the Labour party joined the Conservatives in prioritising lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses rather than the two-child cap on working women. Does the Secretary of State take comfort in the fact that his...
Patricia Gibson: ...No issue is more pressing for our constituents at the moment than the cost of living crisis and its impact on living standards. The UK Government point to a range of factors to explain why, in the two years to March 2024, we have had the biggest fall in living standards since records began, as the Office for Budget Responsibility highlighted. Even as wages rise and inflation falls, there...
Wendy Chamberlain: ...to pensioner poverty in my recent Adjournment debate, and I look forward to meeting the Minister, as was promised, to discuss some of them. As Members have already said, we know that one in three children are living in poverty, and that is not acceptable. Madam Deputy Speaker, the report card is in, and it is a fail. Record numbers of families are relying on emergency food parcels. In...
Amy Callaghan: Oh, sorry, you’ve just moved. Low-income families with children continue to be disproportionately hit during the crisis. It is no surprise that that has had an horrendous impact on mental health. When families are in fuel and food poverty, struggling to keep warm and fed, the stress is certainly not limited to parents, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Tooting. It can aggravate specific...
Afzal Khan: I will simply say yes; I will make some of those points later. Manchester City Council has the third highest rate of child poverty among local authorities in England. The Manchester, Gorton constituency has the sixth highest rate, with just over half of all children living in poverty. There are other ways in which we can understand the scale and impact of poverty. For example, 27% of...
Stuart McDonald: Has the Prime Minister seen the utterly damning new UNICEF report showing that in the decade to 2021, child income poverty rose way faster in the UK than in any of the other 39 countries analysed? Scrapping the benefits cap, scrapping the two-child limit and rolling out the Scottish child payment UK-wide could reverse a decade of utter failure, so why will he—or indeed the so-called...
David Linden: Absolutely. My hon. Friend is spot on to draw the comparison on an issue that impacts both my constituents and hers. I think that probably the two places in Glasgow that are most often twinned are Easterhouse and Drumchapel. She is spot on to refer to the fact that in-work poverty continues to be a massive blight on our communities. She actually raises this at just the right point, as I...
Shona Robison: ...is the third largest as regards wages and gross value added per person in 2021. A record number of foreign direct investment projects were secured in Scotland last year. Devolution has brought many benefits, but it has also exposed quite how beholden we are to the decisions of Westminster. We are fighting Westminster austerity with one hand tied behind our back. In today’s budget, the...
Steven Bonnar: I thank the Minister for that answer. As the Women’s Budget Group has rightly pointed out, women are more reliant on benefits, due to care-giving roles, and they have been disproportionately impacted by regressive social security changes since 2010. What consideration has the Minister given to the abolition of the poverty-inducing benefit cap and the hated two-child limit, to prevent...
Lord Sikka: ...less than £12,570 and, as a result, were not liable to pay any national insurance contributions. Due to fiscal drag, that number is now around 19 million. The national insurance cut delivers zero benefit to 19 million adults, the majority of whom are women. This includes families who have been robbed of nearly £3,000 a year by the Government’s two-child benefit cap. As usual, the...
Viscount Younger of Leckie: ...just round up some of the themes. There were a lot of wide-ranging themes this afternoon: the importance and value of marriage, including same-sex marriage and in the traditional sense; a focus on children; views on single-person households and lone parents; relationships generally, and relating better, and how much this matters; a focus on the elderly from the noble Lord, Lord Davies; the...
