Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department made any payments to the Institute of Fiscal Studies in each of the last five years.

DWP commissions a wide range of policy research and evaluation through its Social and Economic Research Framework, made up of more than 50 research organisations and academic institutions, including IFS, which we contract to carry out specific pieces of research. Such contracts are in the public domain and our protocol is that all research reports are published.

Some examples of contracts which we have had with IFS during the past five years include:

· DWP ad hoc research report number 11 ‘Benefit Cap: Analysis of outcomes of capped claimants’ where DWP carried out the original work and we commissioned IFS to conduct an independent peer review;

· Our annual statistical publication on Households Below Average Income, which is quality assured by IFS

· DWP report 606, ‘The lone parent pilots 24-36 months: the final impact assessment’

It is important to note that, apart from payments in respect of contracts for specific pieces of research, we do not provide any other funding to IFS.