Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to reduce food insecurity.

This Government is wholly committed to tackling poverty in all its forms. Throughout the pandemic, our priority has been to protect incomes by spending £407 billion last year to protect jobs, keep businesses afloat and help families get by. This includes spending an additional £7.4billion to strengthen the welfare system for those most in need, taking our total expenditure on welfare support for people of working age to an estimated £112 billion in 2020/21. In December 2020 we introduced our Covid Winter Grant Scheme providing funding to Local Authorities in England to enable them to support people with food and essential utility bills during the coldest months. It will now run until June as the Covid Local Support Grant, with a total investment of £269m.

The Department for Work and Pensions has recently published new data from the Family Resources Survey on household food security, giving us a better understanding of who is most at risk and underlining how seriously we take the issue of food insecurity. The new data shows that 92% of households are food secure.

As the economy recovers, our ambition is to help people move into and progress in work as quickly as possible based on clear evidence about the importance of employment, particularly where it is full-time, in substantially reducing the risks of poverty. Our Plan for Jobs is already delivering for people of all ages right across the country and includes investing over £7 billion on new schemes such as the £2 billion Kickstart Scheme, the Restart Scheme and our Job Entry Targeted Support Scheme.