Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the impact of the benefit cap on levels of child poverty.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
It is not possible to produce a robust estimate of the impact of the benefit cap policy on levels of child poverty.
The benefit cap provides a strong work incentive, which reflects our long-term focus of continuing to support parents into, and to progress in, work. Our multi-billion-pound Plan for Jobs, which has recently been expanded by £500 million, will help people across the UK to find work and to boost their wages and prospects.
Official child poverty statistics, covering the period 2020/21 will be published in March 2022, as part of the Department’s (a) ‘Children In Low Income Families’ and (b) ‘Households Below Average Income’ publications, subject to the usual checks on data quality.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the timetable for the ratification of International Labour Organisation Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No.190).
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
As of 15 December 2021, the Violence and Harassment Convention Command Paper has cleared without objection which indicates that the Government can proceed to ratification.
The Instrument of Ratification will be drawn up for signature by the Foreign Secretary and deposited at the International Labour Organization as soon as is practicable in the new year. The Convention would enter into force for the UK one year after the date of the UK’s ratification.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what objections they have received, if any, to their Command Paper declaring their intention to ratify the International Labour Organisation Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No.190).
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
As of 15 December 2021, the Violence and Harassment Convention Command Paper has cleared without objection which indicates that the Government can proceed to ratification.
The Instrument of Ratification will be drawn up for signature by the Foreign Secretary and deposited at the International Labour Organization as soon as is practicable in the new year. The Convention would enter into force for the UK one year after the date of the UK’s ratification.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Buscombe on 17 June (HL Deb, col 653), why child poverty has been “rising almost entirely in working families”.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
The Institute for Fiscal Studies published “Living Standards, poverty and inequality in the UK: 2019” on 19 June which acknowledged that the rise of in-work relative poverty is a complex issue with no easy answer. They cited a number of reasons, including that there are more people in work overall and far fewer workless households, for example, there are 667,000 fewer children in workless households compared with 2010. Furthermore, far fewer pensioners are poor than ever before, primarily driven by increased government spending on pension benefits. This has raised the relative poverty line resulting in more ‘in work’ households falling below the line in recent years than they would have done without these increases in pensioner incomes.
The IFS estimated that the remaining third of the increase is due to two main factors: that earnings have risen less quickly towards the bottom of the distribution than the top and that housing costs have risen faster for poorer households than richer ones.
We know that there is more to do to support working people. The Chancellor has set out the Government’s ambition to end low pay across the UK. The National Living Wage, rose to £8.21 an hour in April 2019 and is expected to benefit over 1.7m people. The government is working to ease issues around high housing costs by delivering over 1.3 million extra homes in England since 2010. The Government is now on track to raise housing supply to 300,000 per year on average by the mid-2020s. Over £44 billion of new financial support will be available for housing over the next five years.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Buscombe on 17 June (HL Deb, col 653), how many children live in the “2.4 million households” who will “keep more of what they earn”.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
The Department estimates there will be around 4.1m children in households in Great Britain that will gain from the change in work allowances by 2023/24.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Buscombe on 17 June (HL Deb, col 653), how much each household will gain per week from the £1.7 billion a year cash boost announced in the Budget.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
The change announced in the Budget will enable working parents and people with disabilities on Universal Credit to keep £630 extra income each year or around £12 per week.
HM Treasury’s distributional analysis, published alongside Budget 2018, shows the cumulative effect on household incomes of policies on welfare, tax, and public service spending measures. Because different measures often interact with each other, this cumulative assessment provides the best representation of the overall intended policy effect. This shows that the Government’s decisions have benefited households throughout the income distribution, with the poorest households gaining the most as a percentage of net income.
DWP has not conducted research into the impact of Universal Credit on household poverty. Estimates of the number and proportion of individuals in relative low income are published in the National Statistics Households Below Average Income (HBAI) series, available on gov.uk.
The latest annual publication was on 2017/18 data and we will continue to monitor relative low income rates in future publications. We are committed to building a country that works for everyone – not just the privileged few. We know that work is the best route out of poverty and Universal Credit is designed to strengthen incentives for parents to move into and progress in work. The impact of Universal Credit cannot be considered in isolation; it is a key component of a broader strategy to move Britain to a higher wage, lower welfare, lower tax society.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Buscombe on 17 June (HL Deb, col 653), how many children living in absolute poverty in a household where the adult is (1) self-employed, and (2) in part-time employment, will benefit from the “£1.7 billion a year cash boost to our welfare system”; and by how much the family income will increase per annum in those households.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
The change announced in the Budget will enable working parents and people with disabilities on Universal Credit to keep £630 extra income each year or around £12 per week.
HM Treasury’s distributional analysis, published alongside Budget 2018, shows the cumulative effect on household incomes of policies on welfare, tax, and public service spending measures. Because different measures often interact with each other, this cumulative assessment provides the best representation of the overall intended policy effect. This shows that the Government’s decisions have benefited households throughout the income distribution, with the poorest households gaining the most as a percentage of net income.
DWP has not conducted research into the impact of Universal Credit on household poverty. Estimates of the number and proportion of individuals in relative low income are published in the National Statistics Households Below Average Income (HBAI) series, available on gov.uk.
The latest annual publication was on 2017/18 data and we will continue to monitor relative low income rates in future publications. We are committed to building a country that works for everyone – not just the privileged few. We know that work is the best route out of poverty and Universal Credit is designed to strengthen incentives for parents to move into and progress in work. The impact of Universal Credit cannot be considered in isolation; it is a key component of a broader strategy to move Britain to a higher wage, lower welfare, lower tax society.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many children live in a household where the adult employed is in part-time employment and are living in absolute poverty (1) before housing costs, and (2) after housing costs.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
National statistics on the number of children in absolute poverty in a family where the adults are in part time employment only can be calculated from figures published in the annual "Households Below Average Income" publication.
In 2017/18, the number of children in absolute poverty in families where the adult or adults were in part-time employment only, was 400,000 before housing costs, and 700,000 after housing costs
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many children who live in a household where at least one adult is employed are currently living in absolute poverty after housing costs.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
National statistics on the number of children in absolute poverty in a family where at least one adult is employed can be calculated from figures published in the annual "Households Below Average Income" publication.
In 2017/18, 2.5m children were in absolute poverty (after housing costs) in families with at least one adult in employment. However, nearly half of these families are in part time work only, or are self-employed
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many children live in a household where the adult is self-employed and are living in absolute poverty (1) before housing costs, and (2) after housing costs.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
National statistics on the number of children in absolute poverty, in couple families where at least one adult is in full-time self-employment, can be calculated from figures published in the annual "Households Below Average Income" publication.
In 2017/18, the number of children in absolute poverty, in couple families where at least one adult was in full-time self-employment, was 400,000 before housing costs and 500,000 after housing costs.