Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of current measures of deprivation in capturing dispersed and hidden poverty in rural communities.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) leads on management and publication of the English Indices of Deprivation (IoD). Defra collaborated with MHCLG on a review and update of the indices, published in October 2025. A comprehensive independent literature review identified factors affecting deprivation in rural areas and its measurement which were taken into account in the updated indices. As part of the IoD, MHCLG published a rural report.