Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Baroness Buscombe on 30 October (HL Deb, cols 1156–7), what assessment they have made of the impact of the freeze on working-age benefits on incentivising claimants into work.

The Government’s assessment of the impact of the benefit freeze is set out in the analysis of the measures in the Welfare Reform and Work Act published at the time of the Summer Budget 2015.

As I said in my response to the Noble Baroness’ question on 30 October, the benefit freeze is part of a package of welfare reforms designed to incentivise claimants into work. These include introducing the National Living Wage, increasing the tax-free personal allowance, providing 30 hours of free childcare to working families in England and rolling out of Universal Credit. Analysis published by the department in September 2017 showed that UC claimants are four percentage points more likely to have been in work at any point within six months of starting their claim than the matched sample of JSA claimants (63 per cent to 59 per cent).

The employment rate now stands at a near record high and the number of children living in workless households has fallen to a record low.