Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made an assessment of trends in poverty levels among people aged over 50 who have become economically inactive since the start of the pandemic; and if he will make a statement.

It is not possible to produce a robust assessment of trends in poverty levels among people aged over 50 who have become economically inactive since the start of the pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic impacted the sample size and quality of data collected during the first year of the pandemic. DWP did not publish lower-level data in the 2020/21 HBAI publication and advises caution when making comparison with previous years.

Discontinuities and additional biases introduced by the changes to data collection during the pandemic become more evident when the statistics are disaggregated into smaller groups, such as people aged over 50 who have become economically inactive since the start of the pandemic.