Select committee: Work and Pensions Committee
Conclusion 2
First Report - Cost of Living Support Payments
Published 14 Nov 2023
Paragraph 25
Addressed to Department for Work and Pensions
Work and Pensions Committee Cost of living support payments All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
We are concerned by the cliff edge nature of the cost of living payments which creates a fundamentally unfair income gap where a person is financially penalised for earning just over the qualifying threshold, being in receipt of a sanction or not receiving an eligible payment during the qualifying period. For example, a person earning just £5 over the qualifying threshold would lose nearly £300 if they are ineligible for a cost of living payment and would be significantly worse off than someone just under the threshold.
From: Work and Pensions Committee, First Report - Cost of Living Support Payments (HC 143), paragraph 25, 14 November 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 25 January 2024 (deadline 14 January 2024).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government's response sets out the case for the one-off, automated Cost of Living Payments and the Household Support Fund, and does not change eligibility rules or payment timing in the ways the Committee recommended.
- On the UC nil-award recommendation, the Department "recognises the frustration" but says substantial changes "would introduce complexity, risking delays to payments or introducing unacceptable levels of fraud or error".
- On bringing forward the evaluation, it says fieldwork is due to begin in early 2024 with full findings "later in the year", that earlier publication would be "detrimental to the robustness of the evaluation", but that "any early relevant findings" will feed into policy decisions.
- On Housing Benefit as a qualifying benefit, it says payments to those receiving only Housing Benefit "could not therefore be delivered in a quick, accurate and straightforward manner", and points to Household Support Fund guidance on prioritising such households.
- On Household Support Fund guidance for people with no recourse to public funds, it says it "would not be appropriate to provide a definitive list of powers" because cases "must be judged on an individual basis".