Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of people who have been signposted or referred to a food bank by staff at Shettleston Jobcentre in the last 12 months.

The Department does not collect data on the number of claimants signposted to food banks by Jobcentre staff. We want to develop a better understanding of the drivers of food insecurity and identify which groups are most at risk and, as such, we worked with the Scottish Government, food insecurity experts, and the Office for National Statistics to introduce a new set of food security questions in the latest Family Resources Survey (April). This will enable us in the future to monitor the prevalence and severity of household food insecurity across the UK and for specific groups.