Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 27 June 2017 to Question 97, if he will make it his Department's policy to work with relevant bodies to increase the survey sample sizes to support the production of robust estimates of the number of children in relative low income at constituency and local authority level.

The current FRS sample of 20,000 households a year already makes it one of the largest social surveys in the UK. It is designed to be representative at a country / region level (13 areas), and even at this geography results are often presented as a three-year average. Expanding this to be representative at local authority level would require a huge increase in the sample, which even if practicable, would involve significant additional spending in the order of millions of pounds.

The government is trying to help local authorities understand and monitor disadvantage within their area. Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families, published on 4 April, sets out statutory and non-statutory indicators to provide a framework for a continued focus on improving outcomes for disadvantaged families and children, now and over time. As part of this, we have made available the latest analysis and an evidence base to enable local authorities, local partners and others to understand, and act on, the complex factors of disadvantage in their local area. This includes local-level data on the factors of disadvantage that is available through a local government data tool (LG Inform).