Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate her Department has made of the number of people in the UK who may potentially move into poverty as a result of the predicted rise in fuel bills in Autumn 2022.

No such assessment has been made.

This government is committed to supporting those on low incomes. We will spend over £242bn through the welfare system in Great Britain in 2022/23 including £108bn on people of working age and over £134 billion on pensioners. Of the total amount, around £64 billion will be spent on supporting disabled people and people with health conditions.

The Government understands the pressures people are facing with the cost of living, that is why it is providing over £37 billion of support this year. This includes the £650 Cost of Living Payment, made in 2 instalments, which is designed to target support at low-income households on means-tested benefits. In addition, 6 million eligible disabled people will receive a one-off, disability Cost of Living Payment of £150. And pensioner households will receive a separate one-off payment of £300 (through and as an addition to the Winter Fuel Payment). All households with a domestic electricity bill will also benefit from the £400 support being provided through the Energy Bills Support Scheme. This is on top of the support we have already provided by increasing the National Living Wage to £9.50 per hour and giving nearly 1.7 million families an extra £1,000 a year, on average, through our changes to the Universal Credit taper and work allowances.

We are also providing an additional £500 million to help households with the cost of essentials, on top of what we have already provided since October 2021, bringing the total funding for this support to £1.5 billion. In England, the current Household Support Fund is already providing £421m of support for the period 1 April – 30 September 2022 and will be extended until March 2023 with a further £421m.