Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will publish the outcomes of the (a) pre-testing phase, (b) phase one and (c) phase two of the additional job centre support pilot.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
An evaluation of the Additional Jobcentre Support pilot is ongoing.
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many (a) additional work coaches and (b) additional hours of work coach time have been allocated to jobcentres to administer the Additional Jobcentre Support pilot.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The pilot is being delivered using existing Jobcentre resource.
Asked by: Owen Thompson (Scottish National Party - Midlothian)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many staff have been trained in disability awareness in (a) his core Department and (b) Jobcentres in each of the last three years.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department is unable to provide the information you seek within the appropriate cost limit as you have asked for information that is contained across a wide range of learning journeys.
All staff new to DWP undergo mandatory learning followed by role specific learning, this encompasses vulnerabilities and complex needs training which is threaded throughout learning. Staff continue to build on this in the workplace through accessing policy guidance and point of need learning products.
Please refine your request, for example to mandatory learning to enable data to be provided.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of his Department’s (a) advertising and (b) marketing expenditure was on (i) local newspapers in print and online, (ii) national newspapers in print and online, (iii) social media, (iv) search engines, (v) broadcast and on-demand television and (vi) other channels in the most recent year for which data is available.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department for Work and Pensions delivers a range of campaigns which are essential in ensuring that vulnerable people and pensioners are aware of the financial support that they are eligible for.
Appropriate advertising is a key government approach to ensure that target audiences receive the correct information and the media channels used are selected based upon their potential impact and cost, ensuring value for money for the taxpayer.
The figures provided in the table below show the percentage of the total spend for each advertising channel during 2023/24.
Channel | % of spend |
National and local newspaper print | 15 |
Digital display | 5 |
Social media | 25 |
Search engines | 5 |
Broadcast and on-demand television | 10 |
Radio and digital audio | 30 |
Out of home | 10 |
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment he has made with Cabinet colleagues of the potential impact of the Disability Confident scheme on the disability employment gap.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Disability Confident (DC) is one of a range of policies to support disabled people into work and to close the disability employment gap. It is difficult to isolate the direct impact of individual policies on the disability employment gap as numerous, interacting factors are at play, including overall labour market trends and changes to the composition of the disabled population, in addition to the effects of disability employment policies and programmes in themselves.
When an employer signs up to DC, they agree to commitments which encourage employers to think differently about disability and to take positive action to address issues disabled employees face in the workplace. There are currently over 19,000 DC members and they estimate 11.5 million employees in total working in their businesses.
In September 2023, the Department published findings from a survey with members of the DC scheme, conducted by an independent research agency[1]. The research explored the effect that signing up to the DC scheme had on members’ recruitment and retention attitudes towards disabled people.
The DWP and Cabinet officials regularly meet with Ministerial Disability Champions to drive this agenda across Government. The Champions’ role is to ensure disability inclusion is a priority in their Department’s work. They are helping to deliver our commitment to support disabled people in the UK through creating more opportunities, protecting their rights and ensuring they fully benefit from, and can contribute to, every aspect of our society.
[1] The survey was conducted in February to March 2022. In total 1,233 survey interviews were conducted with scheme members.
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average waiting time was for an initial assessment for people on the Access to Work Scheme in 2023.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The average waiting time for a decision on an AtW application for the financial year 2023/24 was 45.1 days.
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he is taking steps to ensure that his Department's (a) policy and (b) guidance is (i) trauma-informed and (ii) co-produced with lived-experience experts.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The DWP is committed to being a more Trauma Informed organisation. We have a dedicated programme which will integrate the six key pillars of the approach as defined by the Office for Health Improvements and Disparities (December, 2022) which are safety, trustworthiness, choice, empowerment, collaboration and cultural consideration. Our programme looks at these six pillars within the contexts of application to our colleagues, our customers, our culture, and the context of our interaction- whether that is a physical, telephony, digital or postal interaction. We are learning from best practice demonstrated by organisations such as NHS Education Scotland, Work Services Australia and the Wales ACES Hub to shape the future prioritisation of this work.
The integration programme is in its early phases, and we appreciate that it will take time to realise the benefits of changes we implement. We are learning from the continued progress of leaders in the field including programmes such as the Scottish National Trauma Transformation Programme. We recognise that an important aspect of many programmes is policies and procedures and intend to replicate this focus within our own work whilst recognising that the programme does not seek to change what the department does, instead we are impacting how we do this, which will extend to supporting our policy development.
We recognise that any truly trauma informed system is shaped by lived experience experts and we fundamentally believe in the co-production of this programme. This is why we have an extensive network of diverse internal and external stakeholders who are engaged in shaping the programme through ongoing forums and insight activity. We are also currently collaborating with the University of Salford on research which explores how trauma informed the department is through conversations with customers, colleagues and external stakeholders. The outcome of this research will help to shape the future priorities of the programme. Finally, we are currently exploring how we establish our own co-production forums for the programme taking advice from expert stakeholders to ensure we create a safe, empowering space for lived experience experts to whilst establishing trust in the ongoing aims and progress of the programme.
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
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 effectiveness of the Universal Support pilot schemes.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Universal Support is being delivered in two phases. The expansions to Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care (IPSPC) and the Work and Health Programme (WHP Pioneer) are being rolled out for phase one of the service. The aim of phase one is to provide help to up to 50 thousand more disabled people and those with health conditions who want to work, while learning more lessons about how to scale up support for these groups.
WHP Pioneer data will start to be published from May 2024. We are committed to publishing IPSPC programme data in due course. The interim and final evaluation reports for Universal Support Phase 1 covering WHP Pioneer and IPSPC will also be published.
Asked by: Owen Thompson (Scottish National Party - Midlothian)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the proportion of households in receipt of Carer’s Allowance living in food insecurity in (a) the UK, (b) Scotland and (c) Midlothian constituency.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Statistics on the number of individuals living in households that are food insecure by receipt of state support in the UK are published annually in the “Family Resources Survey” publication in “table 9_7” of “household food security tables” found here.
The latest statistics published on 21 March 2024 are for the financial period 2022/23. The
latest available data can also be found on Stat-Xplore here.
No such assessment can be made for Scotland and the Midlothian constituency due to sample sizes and availability of data.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people were underpaid the State Pension due to incorrectly updated National Insurance records in the 2022-23 financial year; and what the total amount is that these people are owed.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This response covers both missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) and UC National Insurance issues.
The exercise to correct National Insurance records for those individuals impacted by errors in their HRP record is underway. The HRP corrections exercise started with HMRC dispatching letters in late 2023. Cases subsequently notified from HMRC started being processed in DWP in early 2024.
In the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts 2022-2023, the central estimate was around 187,000 cases who may have an underpayment of State Pension and for whom we expect to correct, with a total underpayment estimate of £1,043 million.
We intend to publish an update on the exercise in this year’s Annual Report and Accounts.
DWP has corrected the UC data issue for the cases impacted for the tax years up to and including the tax year 2022/2023. This data has been shared with HMRC. As HMRC updates NI records, these updates are sent to DWP. Any State Pension entitlement will be reassessed, and any underpayment addressed accordingly.