§ Earl Russellasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they accept Recommendation 5 of the National Consumer Council's Report Your Food Whose Choice? that, "The Department of Social Security should review benefit levels to take account of the actual purchasing power of family budgets. In particular, decisions on benefit levels should be informed by the link between their incomes, their food purchases and their needs in terms of a healthy diet"; and whether benefit levels for next year will be calculated in the light of this recommendation.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Lord Henley)Uprating benefit to take account of movements in the prices of an arbitrary selection of expenditure items would be complex and difficult to sustain. We are pleased that we have been able to announce a 3.6 per cent. increase in income support in line with inflation. If we had related the increase to food prices, the uprating would have been substantially less.
§ Earl Russellasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are aware of any independent research published in the last five years which has found that income support levels are sufficient to allow people on benefit to afford an adequate diet.
§ Lord HenleyNo direct conclusion can be drawn about relationships between benefit levels and cost of food, since income support does not specify an amount for diet. The MAFF National Food Survey indicates that in general the diets of people in all income groups are nutritionally adequate. Work which attempts to show that a healthy diet is only available to people on higher incomes tends to include expenditure items in the budget which many would not regard as essential.