Social Security Benefits

(asked on 20th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department has made an estimate of the potential additional costs to welfare benefit spending in the event that (a) one million, (b) two million and (c) three million people were to become unemployed.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 28th January 2021

At each fiscal event the Department works closely with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to estimate welfare spend based on latest unemployment projections. The OBR’s latest projections are available here: http://cdn.obr.uk/CCS1020397650-001_OBR-November2020-EFO-v2-Web-accessible.pdf

The latest Universal Credit forecasts for number of households, estimated each year are published in the Benefit Expenditure and Caseload Tables and can be found in, Table 1c, Table 2c and Table 3c, at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/953118/outturn-and-forecast-autumn-budget-2020-revised.xlsx

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