Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if his Department will make an estimate of the number of families accessing foodbank (a) vouchers and (b) foodbank more than once a month.

Foodbanks are independent, charitable organisations and the Department for Work and Pensions does not have any role in their operation. There is no consistent and accurate measure of foodbank usage at a constituency or national level.

We understand the data limitations in this area, and therefore from April 2021 we introduced a set of questions into the Family Resources Survey (FRS) to measure and track food bank usage. The first results of these questions are due to be published in March 2023 subject to usual quality assurance. Our commitment to include questions in the Family Resources Survey show how seriously we take this issue; the data is vital to ensure we understand the full picture.