Naomi Long – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Naomi Long on 2014-04-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will review his decision not to carry out a cumulative impact assessment on the effect of welfare reform on people with disability.

Mike Penning

The Government regularly produces analysis of the cumulative impact of all Coalition changes, including welfare, on households across the income distribution. This information is produced by the Treasury and is published alongside every Budget and Autumn Statement, in the interests of transparency. The previous government did not provide this type of analysis. The most recent update was published with the Budget on 19 March 2014, and can be found using the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/293738/budget_2014_distributional_analysis.pdf

Distributional analysis is provided for the whole population on the basis of household income and household expenditure. However this is not disaggregated to the level of household characteristics such as disability status or lower level geographies. No organisation is able to do this robustly.

This analysis estimates the effect of Coalition measures from all fiscal events from the Budget in June 2010 to the Budget in 2014. It also includes changes that were announced before the Budget in June 2010 that have been implemented by this Government. Current Coalition policies are compared with what might have happened if the previous Government’s policies had continued into the future without any further fiscal consolidation.

The Government currently has no plans to undertake a review or change the decision on cumulative impact assesments.

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