Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Buscombe on 28 November (HL3456), how they assess and evaluate (1) progress in tackling poverty, and (2) the impact of their fiscal and welfare policies on those vulnerable groups of people they have pledged to assist.

This Government is committed to action that tackles the root causes of poverty and disadvantage with policies that incentivise employment as the best route out of poverty. In Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families, we set out a framework for a continued focus on improving children’s long-term outcomes. This includes nine national indicators to track progress in tackling the disadvantages that affect families and children. Four of these measures are set out in Primary legislation which places a duty on the Government report annually to Parliament on the parental worklessness and educational attainment indicators. Data on the non-statutory indicators will also be published each year.

The Government carefully considers the equality impacts of individual policies on those with protected characteristics, including gender, race and disability - in line with both its legal obligations and with its strong commitment to equality issues.

Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) undertake distributional analysis, at each fiscal event, to assess the impact of tax, welfare and public spending changes on household incomes. The latest was published to accompany Autumn Budget 2017.