Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of Autumn Budget 2024 on trends in the number of people living in poverty.

We are committed to tackling poverty. We know that good work can significantly reduce the chances of people falling into poverty so this will be the foundation of our approach.

Backed by £240m investment, the Get Britain Working White Paper launched on 26 November will target and tackle economic inactivity and unemployment and join up employment, health, and skills support to meet the needs of local communities. We are taking the first steps to tackle poverty through our commitments to triple investment in breakfast clubs to over £30 million, introduce a Fair Repayment Rate for deductions from Universal Credit, and increase the National Living Wage to £12.21 an hour from April 2025 to boost the pay of 3 million workers. Alongside this, we are committed to reviewing Universal Credit and we will set out the details in due course.

HM Treasury have published distributional analysis showing the estimated impact of tax, welfare and public service spending decisions on household incomes, across the household income distribution. This can be found here Impact_on_households.pdf (publishing.service.gov.uk)