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 trends in the level of financial hardship among people not eligible for support due to existing means-testing arrangements.

The department's headline poverty statistics, Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistics - GOV.UK show trends in income-based poverty back to 1994/95, including breakdowns regarding whether families are in receipt of means-tested benefits or not. The figures can be filtered to children, working age adults, and pensioners. The statistics also include measures of material deprivation which provide an indication of peoples’ ability to access or afford a range of everyday goods and services.