Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what her Department's policy is on the potential merits of the Employment Guarantee Bill, presented to Parliament on 13 June 2018.

The Department is committed to supporting people into work and Universal Credit supports those claimants who can work and cares for those who cannot, while being fair to the taxpayer. We know that claimants on Universal Credit move into work faster and spend more time looking for work than on legacy benefits and the Universal Credit Full Service Claimant Survey shows that 9 months into a Universal Credit claim 40 per cent of claimants are working for an employer in a paid role, as opposed to only 23 per cent at the start of their claim. This is because Universal Credit is designed to strengthen incentives to move into and progress in work by scrapping the ‘cliff-edges’ of the legacy system, which penalised people for working more than 16 hours a week and providing more help with childcare costs.