Gingerbread’s view: Spring Statement risks child poverty strategy 

Posted 31 March 2025

Last week’s Spring Statement put the success of the government’s promised child poverty strategy at serious risk. For Gingerbread the strategy is of key importance given that single-parent households are almost twice as likely as couple households to be living in poverty. 

 As part of the Spring Statement, the government’s confirmed plans for disability welfare cuts and published an assessment of the cuts which set out that 50,000 more children would be in absolute poverty by 2029-30.  

 The degree to which this will impact single-parent households is not quite clear. Rates of disability among single-parent households are considerably higher than among couple households. So, we would expect the impact of the disability cuts to fall disproportionately on single-parent households. 

However, the same government assessment also sets out that the small increase in the Standard Allowance of Universal Credit also means that single-parent households are the group most likely to gain from the Government’s welfare reforms.   

For our part, with the child poverty strategy due later this year, we will continue to highlight the importance of: 

• Investment in and reform of social security to abolish the two child limit (which would bring 300,000 children out of poverty), ensure Universal Credit covers the essentials and to reduce or abolish sanctions 

• Reform of childcare so that the 30 hour entitlements are at the very least available to those in training or studying, if not making these entitlements available to all 

• Reform of the childcare element of Universal Credit so that it is easier to access and in particularly to allow everyone to access childcare costs up front in a straightforward way 

• Action from employers to create more flexible and part time roles 

• Reform of child maintenance so more children can get access to the financial support they are entitled to. 

 Join our network if you want to help us campaign for these changes and be kept up to date on our action in all these areas.  

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