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, with reference to paragraph 3.18 of the National Audit Office report entitled Investigation into overpayments of Carer’s Allowance, published on 26 April 2019, what changes were made to the business rules of the Verify Earnings and Pensions Service that revised downwards the number of alerts that were forecast to be generated from 380,000 to 75,000.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
A review of rules has provided a streamlined approach to the identification of VEP rules, enabling alignment with the latest HMRC data that feeds into DWP Real Time Earnings (RTE) system.
Examples of improvements include benefit specific rules, such as details of fluctuations in income, one off payments and irregular payments revision.
The Department is constantly reviewing available resources against priorities.
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: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Trussell Trust and Joseph Rowntree Foundation report entitled Guarantee our Essentials, published on 27 February 2024, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of that report's findings on levels of essential costs for single parent families claiming Universal Credit.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
No assessment has been made.
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: 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 school leavers who had been in receipt of free school meals were on Universal Credit six months after leaving school in (a) 2020, (b) 2021, (c) 2022 and (d) 2023.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The information requested is not available.
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 Carer’s Allowance cases his Department pursued for overpayments of (a) between (i) £500 and £999.99 and (ii) £1,000 and £2,000 and (b) more than £2,000 in 2023-24.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We recognise the significant contribution of carers to supporting those most in need, which is why we have increased Carer's Allowance by almost £1,500 since 2010.
Claimants have a responsibility to ensure they are entitled to benefits they claim and to inform the DWP of any changes in their circumstances that could impact their award. For Carer’s Allowance, eligibility is partly dependent upon claimants earning £151 or less a week after tax, National Insurance and allowable expenses.
Where overpayments do occur, the Department has a duty to the taxpayer to protect public funds and to ask for money to be paid back. However, we seek to do so without causing hardship. We remain committed to working with anyone who is struggling with their repayment terms and will always look to negotiate sustainable and affordable repayment plans.
Our most recent statistics show that Carer's Allowance overpayments relating to earnings/employment represents 2.1% of our £3.3bn Carer’s Allowance expenditure.
The information requested has been provided in the table below.
Value Grouping | Volume of new overpayments of Carer’s Allowance in 23/24 |
£500.00 - £999.99 | 11.9k |
£1000.00 - £2000.00 | 13.2k |
More than £2000.00 | 6.8k |
Total | 31.9k |
The above data has been sourced from internal DWP management information, which is intended only to help the Department to manage its business. It is not intended for publication and has not been subject to the same quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics.
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 much and what proportion of fraud and error was (a) prevented upfront and (b) detected after the event in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Our estimate is that the Department prevented up front £17.1bn of fraud and error and detected £0.6bn after the event in the financial year 2022/23.
Further details can be found in the Annual Report and Accounts 2022/23, link below.
Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23 for the year ended 31 March 2023 (publishing.service.gov.uk)
DWP will update these figures in the Annual Report and Accounts for financial year 23/24, expected to be published in Summer 2024.
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.