Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 07 January 2020 to Question 318 on Employment: Poverty, what steps she is taking to reform to the welfare system to tackle in-work poverty; and if she will end the sanctions regime for universal credit.

Universal Credit, at the heart of our welfare reforms, aims to reduce the number of workless households by reducing the financial and administrative barriers to work that existed in the previous system of legacy benefits.

In recent years the Government has made significant investment to improve work incentives including:

o the reduction in the UC taper rate from 65% to 63% in 2017; and.

o An extra £1.7 billion a year put into UC work allowances for working parents and disabled claimants to increase them by £1,000 a year from April 2019. Providing a boost to the incomes of the lowest paid and resulting in 2.4 million families keeping an extra £630 per year of what they earn.

We have also taken a range of broader steps to help families keep more of what they earn including another rise in the National Living Wage to £8.21 and increasing a full-time worker’s annual pay by over £2,750 since its introduction. Tax changes have also made basic rate taxpayers over £1,200 better off since April, compared with 2010. The most recent changes mean that, from April, a single person on the National Minimum Wage is taking home over £13,700 a year after income tax and National Insurance – £4,500 more than in 2009/10. Additionally, further help is being provided to working families by doubling free childcare to 30 hours a week for nearly 400,000 working parents of three and four-year-olds and introducing Tax-Free Childcare, worth up to £2,000 per child per year;

The Government has no plans to remove sanctions but continue to monitor the operation of the policies and processes to ensure the sanctions system remains clear, fair and effective in promoting positive behaviours.

The Government believes that these improvements help people on UC to keep more of what they earn, support employment and help to make work pay.