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 impact of the discontinuation of the £20 per week uplift to universal credit on levels of (a) destitution, (b) relative poverty and (c) fuel insecurity.
It is not possible to produce a robust estimate of the impact of discontinuing the temporary £20 per week uplift to universal credit on poverty. It would involve projecting forward the impact of the pandemic on every household’s income, which is not possible to do with a sufficient degree of confidence.