Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the impact of the increases in the cost of living on levels of foodbank use in (a) Coventry North East constituency and (b) Coventry.

No assessment has been made.

Foodbanks are independent, charitable organisations and the Department for Work and Pensions does not have any role in their operation. There is no consistent and accurate measure of food bank usage at a constituency or national level.

We understand the data limitations in this area, and therefore from April 2021 we introduced a set of questions into the Family Resources Survey (FRS) to measure and track food bank usage. The first results of these questions are due to be published in March 2023 subject to usual quality assurance.

We recognise the pressures on the cost of living and we are doing what we can to help, including spending £22 billion across the next financial year to support people. This includes the recently announced package of support to help households with rising energy bills, worth £9.1 billion.

Also included in this is an additional £500 million to help households (01 April – 30 September 2022) with the cost of essentials, on top of what we have already provided since October 2021, bringing the total funding for this support to £1 billion.

In England, £421 million will be provided to extend the existing Household Support Fund, at least a third of the extension funding (£140m) will be spent on pensioners and at least another third (£140m) will be spent on families with children.