MPs today demand major reforms to a benefits ban for migrants which they say has forced children onto the streets.
Currently many people settling legally in the UK are told they must have “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) for as long as 10 years.
The Commons Work and Pensions Committee today says this should be cut to a five-year cap.
Cross-party MPs also said rules must be relaxed, so that parents classed as NRPF can receive Child Benefit and free childcare.
That would expand a change last month, after heavy campaigning, that allowed children in NRPF families to access free school meals.
Committee chair Stephen Timms said: “We have been moved by harrowing tales of parents and children being forced onto the streets and facing struggles to afford food and necessities, shut off from the help open to others who, like them, live and work legally in the UK.
“The devastating impacts of having no recourse to public funds hit home even harder during the pandemic.”
NRPF rules apply to people who are given leave to remain in the UK but are still deemed “subject to immigration control”.
The committee’s inquiry found some kids spend “most of their childhood denied support which others take for granted”, Mr Timms said.
He added: “The Government has made some very welcome steps in the right direction by permanently extending free school meals entitlement and making the right noises on the offer of free childcare.
“Allowing more parents to work fits in with the Government’s stated aim of helping people back into employment and it is in the interests of families and employers that Ministers now move quickly.”
Home Office minister Tom Pursglove previously said he was “willing to look at” a change from 10 years to five.
He told MPs in January: “I recognise the concern that some express that that is quite a significant change for individuals who find themselves perhaps in difficult circumstances for a short period of time through no fault of their own.”
