Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the likely resilience of food banks during the upcoming winter.

There is no consistent and accurate measure of foodbank usage at a constituency or national level, including any assessment on foodbank resilience.

The Department for Work and Pensions introduced a set of questions into the Family Resources Survey (FRS) to measure and track foodbank usage in April 2021. The first results of these questions are due to be published in March 2023 subject to usual quality assurance.

Our commitment to include questions in the Family Resources Survey show how seriously we take this issue; the data is vital to ensure we understand the full picture