Asked by: James Naish (Labour - Rushcliffe)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of ensuring that the annual uprating of benefits does not result in a net loss of income for vulnerable claimants who are subject to transitional protection following migration to Universal Credit.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
There has been no assessment on the rules relating to Universal Credit’s Transitional Protection.
Transitional Protection protects benefit entitlement levels at the point of moving to Universal Credit. It is a temporary measure to maintain benefit entitlement levels so that customers will have time to adjust to the new benefit system.
Transitional Protection is not intended to provide indefinite financial protection. The Transitional Element will erode with increases in other UC elements, except childcare costs, so to gradually align the customers UC award with those of new UC customers who were not managed migrated, in the same circumstances. This includes increases due to the annual uprating of benefits, and DWP is not seeking to change this or weaken this key principle of Transitional Protection.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will ensure that inflation-linked benefits and tax credits for 2026–27 will be uprated in line with the consumer prices index rate of inflation for September.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Social Security Administration Act 1992 requires the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to review benefit and State Pension rates each year to see if they have retained their value in relation to the general level of prices or earnings. Where the relevant benefit or State Pension rates have not retained their value, legislation provides that the Secretary of State is required to, or in some instances may, up-rate their value. Following this review, benefit and State Pension rates are increased in line with statutory minimum amounts and others are increased subject to Secretary of State’s discretion.
By convention, these discretionary benefits are typically increased annually in line with the increase in prices as measured by the increase in CPI in the year to September. The outcome of Secretary of State’s statutory up-rating review will be announced in the Autumn. The Uprating Order, which seeks Parliamentary approval of her decisions, is usually laid upon return from recess in January and the new rates will enter into force from 6 April 2026.
Tax Credits ended 5 April 2025.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
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 decision to freeze Local Housing Allowance on rates of poverty.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
No assessment has been made using current economic assumptions and methodological practices.
However, the department has previously produced a poverty impact assessment using OBR economic assumptions from 30 October 2024 on an outdated version of the model. Using this methodology, the department has estimated the poverty impact of uprating the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) to the 30th percentile of rents in a broad rental market area compared to freezing it. Uprating the LHA to the 30th percentile in each year has been estimated to decrease the number of individuals in relative poverty after housing costs by 50,000 (0.1%) individuals in 25/26 and 100,000 (0.1%) individuals in 28/29 compared to freezing it at April 2024 levels.
Estimates have been rounded to the nearest 50,000 and are on a UK basis. The poverty impacts are independent of the underlying trends in poverty, so they are not an estimate of the total change in poverty over time.
Since this version of the model, the welfare policies announced at Autumn Budget and Spring Statement have been incorporated into the model and the economic assumptions have been updated to OBR's March 2025 assumptions.
At last year’s Autumn Budget, the Secretary of State’s decision to maintain LHA at current levels for 2025/26 was taken after a range of factors were considered, including rental data, the impacts of LHA rates, rate increases in April 2024, and the wider fiscal context. The April 2024 one-year LHA increase cost an additional £1.2bn in 2024/25, and approximately £7bn over 5 years.
Any future decisions on LHA policy will be taken in the context of the Government’s missions, goals on housing, and the fiscal context.
For those who need further support, Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities. DHPs can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make it her policy to set up a task group on tackling the impact of poverty on disabled people.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This government is putting disabled people’s views and voices at the heart of everything we do. That is why we have brought forward the Pathways to Work Green Paper and opened a public consultation. This consultation welcomes all views, and we hope that a wide range of voices will respond before it closes on the 30 June 2025.
In addition to the consultation itself, we are establishing ‘collaboration committees’ that bring groups of people together for specific work areas and our wider review of the PIP assessment will bring together a range of experts, stakeholders and people with lived experience. We are also in the process of establishing the Disability Advisory Panel, which was announced in the Get Britain Working White Paper. It will be a strategic advisory panel consisting of up to 12 disabled people and individuals with long-term health conditions.
We are listening carefully to the voices of children and families living in poverty, including children with disabilities and special educational needs (SEND). Examples of the engagement we’ve undertaken are events with: Contact, a charity for families with disabled children; ALLFIE, a campaign group focused on including disabled learners in mainstream education; and the Challenging Behaviour Foundation that aims to improve the life opportunities for young people with severe learning disabilities and their families. In April, the Taskforce met with external experts, including disability charities and organisations, to discuss the experiences of disabled children living in poverty.
In December 2024, a Lead Minister for Disability was appointed in every government department, to represent the interests of disabled people and champion disability inclusion and accessibility across their department, as they drive forward progress on the government’s manifesto commitments and 5 missions. I am proud to serve as the chair of this group and we meet regularly throughout the year to break down barriers to opportunity for disabled people right across the government’s long-term missions; and fulfil the manifesto commitment to ensure their departments put the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of everything they do.
Alongside delivering on our Get Britain Working plan to support people into good jobs and make everyone better off, which is the fastest route out of poverty, we’re increasing the Living Wage, uprating benefits (including the first sustained, above inflation increase to the UC standard allowance) and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families with children by introducing a Fair Repayment Rate on Universal Credit deductions to help low-income households. We have also extended free school meals provision to all children in households on Universal Credit.
Asked by: Kate Osamor (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton and Winchmore Hill)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she plans to negotiate reciprocal social security agreements with countries where UK pensioners do not receive annual state pension uprating.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Department has no plans to negotiate such reciprocal social security agreements.
Asked by: Lord Agnew of Oulton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the cumulative nominal and real-terms state pension expenditure savings in (1) 2025–26, and (2) 2044–45, under the uprating scenario of (a) consumer price index (CPI) only, (b) earnings only, (c) CPI or earnings ('double lock'), and (d) the existing 'triple lock'.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
An estimate of cumulative nominal and real-terms state pension expenditure savings in 1) 2025-26 and 2) 2044-45, under the uprating scenarios of a) consumer price index, b) earnings only, c) CPI or earnings and d) Triple Lock are not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
The Office for Budget Responsibility assume long-term annual growth rates for the following economic determinants: Consumer Price Index (2.0%), Average Earnings (3.8%) and ‘Triple Lock’ (4.4%).
Source: OBR September 2024 Fiscal risks and sustainability – charts and tables: supplementary tables, Table 1.1
The Government have made a commitment to the Triple Lock for the entirety of this Parliament which will mean annual spending on people’s State Pensions is forecast to rise by around £31 billion between 2024-25 and 2029-30.
Asked by: Sarah Gibson (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)
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 Bereavement Support Payments in covering the (a) immediate and (b) ongoing costs faced by bereaved families.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
There has been no recent assessment of the adequacy of Bereavement Support Payment covering (a) immediate and (b) on going costs to bereaved families. The Bereavement Support Payment qualitative research published in 2021 explored how the lump sum and the monthly payments were used.
Bereavement Support Payment is intended to help people through the immediate period following a bereavement. Where longer-term financial support is needed, benefits such as Universal Credit have been specifically designed to provide assistance with ongoing living costs. The rate of Bereavement Support Payment is reviewed on a discretionary basis as part of the annual uprating process, but there is no legal requirement to uprate it.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she has taken to increase awareness of the availability of Pension Credit in rural areas.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government wants all pensioners to get the support to which they are rightly entitled. That is why we ran the biggest ever Pension Credit take-up campaign across the whole of Great Britain. This included adverts on television; radio (including Greatest Hits Radio Black Country & Shropshire, Hits Radio Black Country & Shropshire, Classic FM Midlands, Smooth Radio); social media; on YouTube; on advertising screens in Pharmacies, Post Offices and leisure centres. The campaign also featured on train advertising panels as well as in national and regional press (including the Shropshire Star).
As part of the campaign, the Department engaged with all councils in Great Britain, through the regular Local Authority Welfare Direct bulletins. Shropshire Council supported the Pension Credit campaign during our ‘Week of Action’ in September 2024, and on social media.
More recently, around 11 million pensioners will have received a leaflet promoting Pension Credit along with their State Pension uprating letter.
Further campaign and promotional activity is planned for this year.
The latest Pension Credit applications and awards statistics were published on 27 February and are available at: Pension Credit applications and awards: February 2025 - GOV.UK(opens in a new tab). The statistics show that the Department made almost 50,000 extra awards on the comparable period in 2023/24.
Asked by: Victoria Collins (Liberal Democrat - Harpenden and Berkhamsted)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the level of uptake of Pension Credit in (a) Harpenden and Berkhamsted constituency and (b) the rest of England.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government wants all pensioners to get the support to which they are rightly entitled. That is why we ran the biggest ever Pension Credit take-up campaign across the whole of Great Britian. This included adverts on television; radio; social media; on YouTube; on advertising screens in Pharmacies, Post Offices and leisure centres (including in Harpenden and Berkhamsted). The campaign also featured on train advertising panels (including on Chiltern, Greater Anglia, and Thameslink services) as well as in the press.
As part of the campaign, the Department engaged with all councils in Great Britain, including Hertfordshire council, through the regular Local Authority Welfare Direct bulletins. We also directly targeted 120,000 pensioners in receipt of Housing Benefit inviting them to claim Pension Credit. More recently, around 11 million pensioners will have received a leaflet promoting Pension Credit along with their State Pension uprating letter.
Building on the success of our campaign, we are now writing to all pensioners who make a new claim for Housing Benefit, and who appear to be entitled to Pension Credit, encouraging them to make a claim.
The latest Pension Credit applications and awards statistics were published on 27 February and are available at: Pension Credit applications and awards: February 2025 - GOV.UK. The statistics show that the Department made almost 50,000 extra awards on the comparable period in 2023/24. The next set of statistics will be published on 29 May.
Asked by: Fabian Hamilton (Labour - Leeds North East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of not uprating the Local Housing Allowance on (a) poverty and (b) homelessness; and whether she plans to increase rates in line with rental costs.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
No assessment has been made using current economic assumptions and methodological practices.
However, the department has previously produced a poverty impact assessment using OBR economic assumptions from 30th October 2024 on an outdated version of the model. Using this methodology, the department has estimated the poverty impact of uprating the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) to the 30th percentile of rents in a Local Authority compared to freezing it. Uprating the LHA has been estimated to decrease the number of individuals in relative poverty after housing costs by 50,000 (0.1%) individuals in 25/26 and 100,000 (0.1%) individuals in 28/29 compared to freezing it.
Estimates have been rounded to the nearest 50,000 and are on a UK basis. The poverty impacts are independent of the underlying trends in poverty so they are not an estimate of the total change in poverty over time.
Since this version of the model, the move to UC acceleration announced at Autumn Budget has been incorporated into the model and the economic assumptions have been updated to OBR's Spring Statement 2025 Round 2 assumptions.
The causes of homelessness are multi-faceted and often complex, they interact dynamically making it difficult to isolate the relative importance of individual factors. Therefore, no assessment has been made on this basis for the impact on homelessness.
At last year’s Autumn Budget, the Secretary of State’s decision to maintain Local Housing Allowance (LHA) at current levels for 2025/26 was taken after a range of factors were considered, including rental data, the impacts of LHA rates, the fact that rates were increased in April 2024, and the wider fiscal context. The April 2024 one-year LHA increase cost an additional £1.2bn in 2024/25, and approximately £7bn over 5 years.
Any future decisions on LHA policy will be taken in the context of the Government’s missions, goals on housing, and the fiscal context.
For those who need further support, Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities. DHPs can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.