Social Security Benefits: Glasgow South West

(asked on 13th November 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the benefits freeze on constituents in Glasgow South West.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 16th November 2017

The analysis published at the time of the 2015 Budget assesses the impact of the measures in the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 including the benefit freeze. This includes an estimate that the benefit rate freeze would save £3.5 billion in 2019-20 (https://www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-assessments/IA15-006C.pdf). We are not able to provide constituency-level analysis for the full range of measures covered by our welfare reforms.

Our welfare reforms to working-age benefits are part of the Government’s commitment to incentivise work and support working families. We know that work is the best route out of poverty and have strong evidence that a person’s employment status has a direct impact on their mental health and wellbeing.

We are supporting people who have additional needs as a result of disability or illness and have maintained the value of payments to meet the extra costs they face. We now spend over £50 billion a year on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions, which represents an increase of more than £7 billion since 2010.

DWP is committed to ensuring homeless people get the appropriate support they need to move into work so they can succeed and rebuild their lives. The department provides a range of support to help homeless people into work, including access to the Jobcentre Plus employment offer with individual tailoring, access to hardship payments for claimants who have received sanctions and the homelessness easement to job-seeking requirements to be temporarily put on hold whilst homeless claimants find accommodation.

The Government is tackling the root causes of child poverty and disadvantage. We know that children living in workless households have significantly poorer outcomes than those in working families. Since April 2016, the Universal Credit childcare element has covered up to 85% of eligible childcare costs, compared with 70% in Working Tax Credit. The number of children living in households where no one is in work is now at its lowest level since comparable records began.

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