Lord Ouseley – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2016-05-24.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the freeze on housing benefit rates, combined with an extended benefit cap and rising rents, on homeless families, and especially children, in particular in cases where local authorities have to place families in temporary housing far away from their local areas.

Lord Freud

The Government routinely publishes cumulative analysis of the impacts of its tax, welfare and public spending policies on households. The most recent assessment was published at Budget 2016 and is available on gov.uk. Nevertheless, such static analysis is limited in that it cannot robustly capture the behavioural changes encouraged by these policies. Considering welfare measures in isolation, such as Housing Benefit changes, would fail to recognise the impacts of tax and spending decisions such as the increase to the personal allowance and the provision of early years’ childcare, which are benefitting families up and down the country.