asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether the threshold for benefits such as free school milk, rent and rate rebates, etc., will be raised so as to ensure that the child interim benefit has the intended effect of raising the net income of one-parent families.

No. Such a policy of effectively extending the disregards of non-means-tested benefits would delay the reduction of dependency on means-tested benefits, to which the Government are committed. As regards free school milk, income is not one of the criteria which determines eligibility.