Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department plans to take to help low-income families in Solihull constituency with the cost of living.

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 and has taken further decisive action to support people with their energy bills. The new “Energy Price Guarantee” will mean a typical UK household will now pay up to an average £2,500 a year on their energy bill for the next two years from 1 October, saving the average household in Great Britain at least £1,000 from October. This is in addition to the over £37bn of cost-of-living support announced earlier this year which includes the £400 non-repayable discount to eligible households provided through the Energy Bills Support Scheme.

This includes a £650 cost of living payment (paid in 2 lump sums of £326 and £324) which has been designed to target support at more than 8 million low-income households on means-tested benefits. The payment of £326 was paid between the 14 July and the 31 July for most people and the payment of £324 will be made in the Autumn. In addition, 6 million eligible disabled people will receive a one-off disability Cost of Living Payment of £150 from 20 September and pensioner households will receive a one-off payment of £300 through and as an addition to the Winter Fuel Payment from November.

Most customers with a domestic electricity meter will benefit from the £400 support being provided through the Energy Bills Support Scheme, which will help around 29 million households across Great Britain. This support is in addition to the £150 Council Tax rebate for households in England in Council Tax bands A-D, which was announced in February, and which millions of households have already received. This is on top of the support already provided by increasing the National Living Wage to £9.50 per hour and raising the National Insurance threshold to £12,570 from 6 July 2022, which is a saving of over £330 for a typical employee.

The government is also providing an additional £500 million to help households with the cost of essentials, on top of what has already been provided since October 2021, bringing the total funding for this support to £1.5 billion. In England this will take the form of an extension to the Household Support Fund backed by £421m, running from 1 October 2022 to 31 March 2023. The current Household Support Fund is already providing £421m of support for the period 1 April - 30 September, at least a third (£140m) will be spent on families with children. Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council has been allocated £1,408,359.07.