Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment he has made of the potential impact of AI on the functioning of the welfare system.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP is continually exploring the use of all types of Artificial Intelligence and its potential to support the provision of more digital services with a human touch in a safe, ethical, and considered way. Artificial Intelligence will never replace the role of our colleagues in supporting customers throughout their journey.
We are using Artificial Intelligence to undertake administrative or repetitive tasks, freeing up our colleagues to spend more time with claimants.
As part of our approach, and in-line with the Prime Minister’s Foundation Model Taskforce, DWP has created a Generative Artificial Intelligence Lighthouse Programme which will safely guide our innovation in emerging Artificial Intelligence technology. The role of this programme is to ‘test and learn’ in a safe and governed environment where all types of AI can be used to assist us in the delivery of our customer outcomes and department efficiencies. Following this test and learn approach will help us to build more certainty on the potential benefits that can be realised.
Where Artificial Intelligence is used to assist its activities in prevention and detection of fraud within UC applications, DWP always ensures appropriate safeguards are in place for the proportionate, ethical, and legal use of data with internal monitoring protocols adhered to. Through the work of departmental governance, we can always explain how the AI reaches conclusions using data.
DWP does not use AI to replace human judgement in determining or denying a payment to a claimant. Where appropriate, Equality and Data Protection Impact Assessments have been carried out.
DWP's Personal Information Charter explains how and why we use personal information and citizen’s rights and responsibilities.
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an estimate of the change in the employment rate between 2017-18 and 2023-24 for people with (a) schizophrenia, (b) bipolar disorder, (c) depression and (d) mental health conditions as a whole.
Answered by Sarah Newton
The information requested in not available. The Department does not produce forecasts of employment for people with specific health conditions.
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the cost to the public purse has been of the New Enterprise Allowance in each of the last five years.
Answered by Alok Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
Between April 2011 and December 2017, New Enterprise Allowance has supported over 113,000 people to start their own business.
The Departmental spend on New Enterprise Allowance (NEA), comprising contracted mentoring costs and Allowance payments to participants who had started to trade from 2013/14 is set out in the table below:
£m | 2013/14 | 2014/15 | 2015/16 | 2016/17 | 2017/18 |
Total NEA spend | 58.8 | 44.2 | 20.2 | 29.1 | 22.1 |
Notes:
The reducing spend reflects:
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made an assessment of recent trends in the number of individuals in receipt of the New Enterprise Allowance.
Answered by Alok Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
The Department regularly publishes official statistics for the New Enterprise Allowance Scheme, including an overview of the latest trends seen in the data. The latest publication can be accessed at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/new-enterprise-allowance-april-2011-to-december-2017
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made an assessment of trends in the level of self-employed people participating in a private pension scheme.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
As part of its review of automatic enrolment, published in December 2017, the Government looked at the position of the self-employed and private pension saving. The review established that the 4.8 million people who are self-employed in the UK are a hugely varied population with different income and savings needs for their retirement. Overall, participation rates for the self-employed have been on the decline in recent years, falling from 31 per cent in 2006/7 to 14 per cent in 2016/17. While pension participation rates have fallen for the self-employed, analysis has shown that the self-employed have, on average, broadly comparable levels of total assets to employees’ (PPI report on policies for increasing long-term saving of the self-employed). However, analysis has shown the distribution of assets to be different for employees compared to the self-employed – employees tend to have a higher level of private pension wealth compared to the self-employed and the self-employed tend to have higher levels of property wealth relative to employees.
The review found that there is currently no single or simple and straightforward mechanism to bring self-employed people into workplace pension saving. Nor is there any consensus or evidence about the best approach to increasing pension saving among this group.
We are committed to work towards implementing our manifesto commitment to improve retirement savings among the self-employed by testing targeted interventions to understand what works in practice. We will provide more information about the trial areas later this year, following our feasibility work.
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps her Department has taken to encourage self-employed individuals to participate in a private pension scheme.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
As part of its review of automatic enrolment, published in December 2017, the Government looked at the position of the self-employed and private pension saving. The review established that the 4.8 million people who are self-employed in the UK are a hugely varied population with different income and savings needs for their retirement. Overall, participation rates for the self-employed have been on the decline in recent years, falling from 31 per cent in 2006/7 to 14 per cent in 2016/17. While pension participation rates have fallen for the self-employed, analysis has shown that the self-employed have, on average, broadly comparable levels of total assets to employees’ (PPI report on policies for increasing long-term saving of the self-employed). However, analysis has shown the distribution of assets to be different for employees compared to the self-employed – employees tend to have a higher level of private pension wealth compared to the self-employed and the self-employed tend to have higher levels of property wealth relative to employees.
The review found that there is currently no single or simple and straightforward mechanism to bring self-employed people into workplace pension saving. Nor is there any consensus or evidence about the best approach to increasing pension saving among this group.
We are committed to work towards implementing our manifesto commitment to improve retirement savings among the self-employed by testing targeted interventions to understand what works in practice. We will provide more information about the trial areas later this year, following our feasibility work.
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made an assessment of the progress of the delivery of the Pension Dashboard.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
On Tuesday 4 September 2018, I published a written statement providing an update on pensions including the Pensions Dashboard. This statement can be found here: https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2018-09-04/HCWS933/
An industry-led Dashboard, facilitated by Government, will harness the best of industry innovation. We will continue to engage with industry, consumer groups and other stakeholders on this model and Government will protect pension savers and personal information by legislating where necessary.
We will shortly report on the findings of the Feasibility Study.
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps her Department has taken to increase levels of social mobility.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
I refer you to my previous answer to the member for Witham in the House on 21 May, volume 641, column 552. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-05-21/debates/3F200720-92F6-4F4B-A1E1-AF6454B09F5B/SocialMobility
Through our reforms to the welfare system, we have increased the number of people in employment to a record 32.39m, including increases across historically under-represented groups, and in doing so we have reduced the number of children living in workless households by around 600,000.
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the effect of long-term unemployment on the mental health needs of claimants.
Answered by Sarah Newton
We know that the longer a working age person is out of work, the more difficult it is for them to return to work and their health and wellbeing may worsen as a result, which is why improving employment support for people with mental health issues is a key priority for this Government.
The Command Paper Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability, published in November 2017, outlines actions to improve out of work support, including:
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he has taken to increase the range of statistics that his Department collects on income mobility.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Department for Work and Pensions (as well as the Office for National Statistics) publishes a wide range of information looking at the income distribution. We have announced we will be producing a new publication, Income Dynamics in February/March 2017, which will look at income mobility, including a measure of persistent low income, based on new data from the Understanding Society survey.