§ Mr. Peter BottomleyTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what assessment his Department has made of the comparative living costs of homeless families placed in permanent accommodation with self-contained cooking facilities and homeless families who are placed in temporary accommodation and who are reliant on the purchase of take-away food.
§ Mr. BurtNone. Such an assessment would be difficult with neither a practicable definition of self-contained216W cooking facilities nor an accurate assessment of the number of people with access to other cooking facilities and the use they make of them.
§ Mr. Peter BottomleyTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what research his Department has undertaken into the impact of introducing VAT on take-away food on the weekly household budgets of homeess families living in temporary accommodation who are without access to self-contained cooking facilities.
§ Mr. BurtNone. Such research would not take account of families with access to facilities that were not self-contained. It would also require a practicable definition of the term "self-contained cooking facilities".