Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for what reason his Department's distributional analysis accompanying the Spring Statement 2022 combined all tax, welfare and public service spending decisions since the Spending Round 2019; and what plans his Department has to publish a separate distributional analysis for each fiscal event during that period.

At each fiscal event HM Treasury has regularly published distributional analysis of the impact of tax, welfare and spending decisions on households.

The aim of the government’s distributional analysis is to present a comprehensive picture of the net effect of tax or welfare changes on household incomes, as well as the impact of public spending decisions, in the round. As each policy decision will have a different effect on households, presenting the total impact over a relatively long time period provides a more robust, comprehensive and stable approach than looking at every policy individually.

Distributional analysis published at Spring Statement 2022 shows that in 2024-25, the tax, welfare and spending decisions made since Spending Round 2019 (SR19) will have benefitted the poorest households most (as a percentage of income). The impact of government policy since SR19 on the bottom four deciles is expected to be worth more than £1,000 a year, while there will have been a net benefit on average for the poorest 80% of households.