Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the welfare system in helping to alleviate levels of (a) pensioner, (b) in-work, (c) food and (d) child poverty.

Throughout the pandemic, this Government has put an unprecedented package of support in place to strengthen the welfare safety net for individuals, families and communities who need help at this critical time. A distributional analysis conducted by HMT shows that government interventions since March 2020 have:

• supported the poorest working households the most (as a proportion of February income)
• been worth around a fifth of incomes for working households (on average)
• reduced the scale of losses for working households by up to two-thirds

Additionally, through the COVID Winter Grant Scheme, announced on 9 November, we are extending that support with an additional £170m for local authorities in England so that they can support families with children and other vulnerable people with the cost of food and essential utilities this winter.

Our most recent published statistics on poverty rates are for a pre-COVID period (up to 2018/19), available in the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-199495-to-201819

The link provides poverty rates for children, working age adults and pensioners, and also includes breakdowns of poverty rates by benefit types.

No assessment has been done by this Department on food poverty.