Select committee: Work and Pensions Committee
Recommendation 6
First Report - Cost of Living Support Payments
Published 14 Nov 2023
Paragraph 40
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 ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We are concerned that some people with no recourse to public funds could be denied Household Support Fund (HSF) support from local authorities, despite potentially being eligible for such support, due to a lack of clarity in the guidance. We are also concerned that some people with no recourse to public funds will not be able to access support through the HSF because there are no specific powers or duties which can be used to enable their access to funding. The Government should clarify in the Household Support Fund guidance the circumstances when a local authority can use the Household Support Fund to assist those with no recourse to public funds. We certainly hope this would explicitly include families with children who otherwise meet HSF’s eligibility criteria.
From: Work and Pensions Committee, First Report - Cost of Living Support Payments (HC 143), paragraph 40, 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".