Select committee: Work and Pensions Committee
Recommendation 6
Second Report - The Cost of Living
Published 27 Jul 2022
Paragraph 28
Addressed to Department for Work and Pensions
Work and Pensions Committee The cost of living All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Whilst £1.5 billion for the Household Support Fund is welcome, we are concerned that there is no information available to indicate where this funding is going, The cost of living 37 and whether or not it is supporting the most vulnerable households effectively. Discretionary funding should not replace core funding. Where the Government continues to use discretionary funds, it should ensure councils are well supported to deliver the funding to the households who need it the most. We ask the Department to publish information on what local authorities have spent this funding on to date by the end of September 2022.
From: Work and Pensions Committee, Second Report - The Cost of Living (HC 129), paragraph 28, 27 July 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 8 September 2022 (deadline 27 September 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) sets out its position on the Committee's recommendations on the cost of living, declining several (including a review of benefit adequacy and a written Pension Credit strategy) while describing existing communications work and support measures.
- On benefit uprating, DWP says it "will not be making any IT changes" to legacy benefits as they close, and that there are "no plans to change the up-rating period", because a consistent period means peaks and troughs "even out over time".
- The Government says it does not intend to conduct a specific review of benefit adequacy; in the autumn the Secretary of State will undertake her statutory annual up-rating review and may increase benefits "if she considers it appropriate".
- On the benefit cap, the Government says the cost-of-living payment is exempt from it, and that the Secretary of State "is reviewing further advice on this". It gives no date.
- On Pension Credit, DWP "does not consider that a written strategy or targets for take-up" are required, citing existing work with organisations; it is "looking at processes" that might be simplified but says automatic awards are not possible.