#budget-2025

#budget-2025

"I'm leading the child poverty task force and I've been doing that work from government. "But I'm clear about what needs to happen. I'm clear about what the evidence tells us. And I'm clear about what we need to do." She added: "There's a real urgency about this because every year that passes, as children are born, as they move into that system, the numbers go up, child poverty rates increase. So we have to tackle it."

She added that any borrowing from the reserve - which amounted to £9 billion last year but is being halved in 2025 - would have to be repaid. The Reserve is intended for "genuinely unforeseen, unaffordable and unavoidable pressures" but has in recent years been used to fund public sector pay deals and compensation settlements.