Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how they reconcile figures from the Office for National Statistics, in its UK labour market: April 2018 bulletin, showing that the employment rate is “the highest since comparable records began in 1971”, with statistics published by the Trussell Trust showing increasing demand for the services provided by food banks over the last two years.

Work offers people the best opportunity to get out of poverty and to become self-reliant; adults in working families are around 4 times less likely to be in poverty than those in workless families. This is why we are undertaking the most ambitious reform to the welfare system in decades - so that it supports people to find and to stay in work. People use food banks for many and varied reasons and, while there are no official statistics on food bank usage, recent data from the Trussell Trust shows that the majority of users are out of work.

As a safeguard for people needing more support, we have a well-established system of hardship payments, benefit advances and budgeting loans. Universal Credit has introduced a further package of measures announced at the Autumn Budget 2017, such as making advances of up to 100 per cent of the indicative award available and increasing the repayment period to 12 months, removing the 7 waiting days, providing an additional payment of 2 weeks of Housing Benefit to support claimants when they transition to UC, and changing how claimants in temporary accommodation receive support for their housing costs.