What proportion of total benefits spending goes to unemployment benefits, according to data from the Office for National Statistics?
1%
11%
21%
41%
According to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2015, how many people classed as “in poverty” were from a working family?
2.4m
4.6m
6.8m
7.2m
Unclaimed benefits amount to £13.2bn each year, according to figures by the Department for Work and Pensions. How much more is this than the amount lost to fraud?
Five times
10 times
15 times
Roughly the same amount
According to an estimate from the New Statesman, how many of the DWP’s own staff may be eligible to apply for in-work universal credits themselves due to low pay?
Up to 15%
Up to 25%
Up to 30%
Up to 40%
From April 2016, all workers aged 25 or over are entitled to a "national living wage". What is it, per hour?
£5.30
£6.70
£7.20
£9.00
How many British nationals are claiming unemployment benefit in countries around the EU?
At least 12,000
At least 30,000
At least 50,000
At least 100,000
How many claimants of jobseeker’s allowance claim for more than a year?
70%
55%
34%
10%
In 2014 what percentage of housing benefits were paid to people in work?
1%
11%
21%
31%
According to 2013 figures, what percentage of the UK’s adult population is dependent on the welfare state?
14%
34%
54%
64%
How much better off a week would an adult be working a full-time minimum wage job than on benefits?
£98.77
£62.37
£34.21
-£4.86
Solutions
1:A - In 2014-15, the Office for National Statistics calculated that £44bn was spent on working age people, through family benefits, income support and tax credits; this includes benefits such as child benefit and support for people on low income. £108bn was spent on pensions, £27bn on housing benefit and £41bn on incapacity and disability benefits. Just £3bn went to the unemployed. In 2015-16, this dropped to £2bn., 2:C - The Rowntree Foundation suggests that 3.8 million people living in poverty live in families where all adults work, and another 3.1 million live in families where one adult works and one does not. Less than half of people in poverty live in workless or retired families, 3:B - In 2013-14, the Department for Work and Pensions declared the total amount unclaimed by people who would be entitled to benefits is likely to be between £11.6-13.23bn a year, 10 times the amount lost due to fraud (£1.2bn). Meanwhile, government losses through tax avoidance reached £5bn. In 2016, the charity Turn2Us found that low-income families were among those missing out the most from unclaimed benefits. , 4:D - The figure was suggested in an article by Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the public and commercial services union. In response to a freedom of information request in early 2016, the DWP did not dispute the possibility that its own jobcentre staff may become claimants, though they maintained that employees “have the right to request to be seen by a work coach from another job centre to respect their privacy”., 5:C - The first two figures refer to the hourly rate for the national minimum wage, which was £5.30 for workers aged 18-20 and £6.70 for those 21 and over in 2015. The national living wage is to rise to £9 per hour by 2020., 6:B - More than four times as many Britons obtain unemployment benefits in Germany as Germans do in the UK, while the number of jobless Britons receiving benefits in Ireland exceeds their Irish counterparts in the UK by a ratio of 5:1. Having said that, of those 30,000 Britons claiming unemployment benefit in the EU, only 62 are living in the 10 countries that have joined since 2004. , 7:D - According to Poverty and Social Exclusion, fewer than half of jobseeker’s allowance claimants claim for more than 13 weeks at a time, and fewer than 10% for more than a year. A freedom of information request to the DWP in 2013 revealed that of 1.5 million people claiming jobseeker’s allowance, only 1,070 had a continuous claim of over 10 years. On this evidence, unemployment benefits lead to neither dependency nor long-term unemployment., 8:C - Official DWP figures shows that in-work claimants make up 21% of all housing benefit claims – compared to 11% five years earlier. It is said that just one in eight people who receive housing benefit are unemployed; and though it is difficult to ascertain exactly how many housing benefit claimants are unemployed, it is clear that the majority of claimants are pensioners, carers, people with a disability and people on low incomes., 9:D - 20.3m families receive at least one form of benefit (64% of all families). For 9.6m benefits make up more than half of their income, and that takes account of the fact that the number of families receiving benefits is 1-2m fewer than previous years because changes to child tax credits mean some working families who previously got a small amount now get nothing., 10:B - In 2014 the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimated that an unemployed person aged over 25 could receive a total weekly disposable income of £70.47, compared to a full-time job on minimum wage earning you disposable income of £132.84. For a family of four with two unemployed parents, that rises to a benefits-based weekly disposable income of £259.28 versus £332.82 if one parent works full-time on minimum wage. These figures will be different now that the living wage has come into effect.
