Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate her Department has made of the number of people in employment that are living in poverty in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England; what recent assessment she has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the levels of in-work poverty in those areas; and what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the welfare system in helping to alleviate levels of in-work poverty in those areas.

National Statistics on the number and percentage of individuals in low income are published annually in the “Households Below Average Income” publication. Data for Coventry North East constituency and Coventry is unavailable due to insufficient sample size.

HBAI does not publish estimates of low income by an individual’s work status but estimates of low income for working age adults by the employment status of all working age adults in the household are available on Stat-Xplore (https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/). Guidance in the use of Stat-Xplore is available here: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html

In the three years to 2019/20, the number of working age adults in a working household in absolute poverty, before housing costs, in the West Midlands was 400,000.

In the three years to 2019/20, the number of working age adults in a working household in absolute poverty, before housing costs, in England was 2,800,000.

No assessment has been made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on in-work poverty in those areas, nor the adequacy of the welfare system in helping alleviate in-work poverty in those areas.