Poverty: Coronavirus

(asked on 5th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the level of (a) absolute and (b) relative poverty.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 8th October 2020

We understand that this is a difficult time for people on low incomes and we’ve taken significant action to support those affected by Coronavirus, including through income protection schemes, mortgage holidays and additional support for renters. For those most in need we’ve injected more than £9 billion into the welfare system, which includes an increase to Universal Credit of up to £1,040 this financial year.

Distributional analysis published by HMT in July 2020 shows the Impact of Covid-19 on working household incomes. This publication shows that the lowest income decile of working households has seen no fall in income due to Government measures that have been put in place. This is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/impact-of-covid-19-on-working-household-incomes-distributional-analysis-as-of-may-2020

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