Eilidh Whiteford – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2014-06-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the statement of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Welfare Reform Committee on 26 June 2014, that ‘I want an analysis of the use of foodbanks that everybody can subscribe to’, whether his Department (a) is producing, (b) has commissioned or (c) plans to commission any new research into the use of foodbanks.

Esther McVey

The evidence David Mundell, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland provided to the Scottish Parliament’s Welfare Reform Committee on the 26 June highlighted the underlying complexity to the use of foodbanks.

The Government has already commissioned a report on food security by Warwick University, which was published in February 2014. The Government has no immediate plans to produce or commission further research, but will keep this under review.

Benefit clearance times are steadily improving with 92% of benefits being processed on time (within 16 days) nationally which is 6 percentage points higher than in 2009/10.

We have in place a robust system of safeguards that seek to ensure sanctions are only applied to those claimants who wilfully fail to meet their requirements. It remains the case that the vast majority of claimants do comply and are not sanctioned – each month only around 5% of JSA claimants are sanctioned and fewer than 1% of ESA claimants. Reduced payments are made where necessary to prevent hardship.