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 effect of the family test on her Department's policies; and if she will make a statement.

The Family Test was announced by the Prime Minister in August 2014 and introduced in October 2014. DWP published guidance for Departments and officials on how the test should be applied when formulating policy and my Department follows that guidance:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/368894/family-test-guidance.pdf.

The Family Test is an integral part of the policy making process and is applied in a proportionate way in the development of all new policy in line with the Family Test guidance.

Where the test identifies impacts on the family, this will be evidenced as part of the formal published Impact Assessment, but at present no such impacts have been identified in Defra.