Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government why the repeal of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011 required a provision to amend the Welfare Reform Act 2012 to review the benefit cap every five years, rather than in each Parliament; and why this five year period began in March 2022.

When the review was undertaken once in each Parliament this created potential uncertainty, given the possibility of an early election. This was dealt with by a specific reference to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011.

The repeal of that Act meant that there would be no certainty as to the time period in which the duty had to be complied with and therefore, a significant risk of inadvertent non-compliance.

For this reason, The Welfare Reform Act 2012 was amended to impose a statutory duty to carry out a review of the levels within a certain time frame.

The new five-year period begins in March 2022 as this is when the amending legislation came into force.