Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what methods her Department uses to calculate the minimum amount of social security that a person can live off.

Under the Social Security Administration Act 1992 the Secretary of State is required by law to review State Pension and benefit rates each year to see if they have retained their value in relation to the general level of prices or earnings. We have uprated benefit rates for 2025/26 in line with inflation, with 5.7 million Universal Credit households forecast to gain by an average of £150 annually.

In the Pathways to Work Green Paper, we recently announced that we will improve the adequacy of the standard allowance with the first sustained above inflation rise in the basic rate of Universal Credit since it was introduced. This increase will be for new and existing customers and will benefit millions of people.