Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department plans to develop or adopt a UK list of hazardous medicinal products and to require safety data sheets for finished medicines; and if he will take steps to work with the Health and Safety Executive to make such a list publicly available to NHS employers.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 30 October 2025 to Question UIN 84436.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make and assessment of the potential merits of reviewing the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 to ensure that hazardous medicinal products with reprotoxic effects are controlled to the same standard as carcinogens and mutagens.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 30 October 2025 to Question UIN 84440.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment their Department has made of trends in the level of discrimination faced by (a) Sikhs and (b) Jews as ethnic groups in the provision of their Department's services.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
I refer my Hon. Friend to the answer I gave on 18 July 2025 to PQ UIN 66615.
Asked by: Liz Jarvis (Liberal Democrat - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he plans to implement he recommendations of the Independent Review of Carer’s Allowance Overpayments.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
I refer the hon. Member to my Written Statement of 25 November HCWS1092 and (at Col 22WS) Carer's Allowance Overpayments Review - Hansard - UK Parliament where I outlined the department’s response to Liz Sayce’s Independent Review. The Government has welcomed the report and is accepting or partially accepting 38 out of the 40 recommendations. In some cases, the changes the report is asking for have already been made. Others will take more time to put in place.
Asked by: Maureen Burke (Labour - Glasgow North East)
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 potential implications for his Department's policies of the report by Marie Curie, entitled Dying in Poverty, published in 2025.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government acknowledges the findings of Marie Curie’s Dying in Poverty report (2025), which highlights the financial insecurity experienced by individuals at the end of life.
This Government is committed to providing a financial safety net for those who need it including for those nearing the end of their life. For these claimants, the Government’s priority is to provide financial support quickly and compassionately. The main way this is applied is through the Special Rules for End of Life (SREL) which enable people who are nearing the end of their lives to get faster, easier access to certain welfare benefits without needing to attend a medical assessment or serve waiting periods, and in most cases, receive the highest rate of benefit.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what guidance his Department has issued on the consideration of occupational health reports when assessing claims for (a) Employment and Support Allowance and (b) Personal Independence Payment for people with cognitive or fluctuating conditions.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department provides comprehensive training and guidance for assessment providers and the health professionals (HPs) who carry out both Work Capability Assessments (WCA) in Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Universal Credit (UC), and Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments. The WCA Handbook and the Personal Independence Payment Assessment Guide (PIPAG) sets out how HPs should evaluate all relevant evidence when assessing a claimant’s functional limitations against the respective criteria.
Both WCA and PIP assessments are functional assessments, focusing on the impact of health condition(s) or disability. HPs consider all available evidence. DWP decision makers give due consideration to all available evidence when making decisions on benefit entitlement, including the HP’s assessment report and any evidence provided by the individual, their GP or consultant, and anybody else that provides them with formal or informal support.
HPs receive training on cognitive and fluctuating conditions and how these might impact on how individuals perform the activities/descriptors which form the assessments.
Asked by: Danny Beales (Labour - Uxbridge and South Ruislip)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will set out how his Department monitors whether Universal Credit claimant commitments for single-parent claimants are appropriately tailored to individual circumstances.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Lead carers within Universal Credit have different conditionality requirements that reflect their childcare responsibilities. These expectations are set according to the age of their youngest child: where the youngest child is under 1, there are no work preparation or work search requirements; where the youngest child is aged 1 or 2, the lead carer is expected to undertake work preparation activities only; and where the youngest child is aged 3 to 12, they may be asked to undertake work-related activities for up to 30 hours per week.
Work Coaches ensure that claimant commitments for single parents are appropriately tailored through a personalised discussion with each customer. This enables the Work Coach to take into account the individual’s circumstances, including childcare availability, school hours, travel time, and wider caring responsibilities, to ensure that support remains flexible and appropriate to the customer’s needs.
Asked by: Lee Dillon (Liberal Democrat - Newbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of the requiring claimants to score four points in a single daily living activity to be eligible for the Personal Independence Payment on people with learning disabilities.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As I set out to the House on 1 July 2025, the Government listened to concerns and withdrew its proposal to introduce an additional requirement to score a minimum of 4 points in a single activity to be eligible for the daily living element of PIP.
Instead, we launched the Timms Review, the first full review of PIP since its introduction in 2013. The Review is being co-produced with disabled people, the organisations that represent them, and other experts, and aims to ensure that PIP is fair and fit for the future.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether Sikhs and Jews are recorded as (a) ethnic or (b) religious groups by the agencies his department is responsible for.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department adheres to the current harmonised definitions for ethnicity and religion, which are owned and managed by the Office for National Statistics.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many households are in receipt of benefits in excess of £28,000.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Family Resources Survey (FRS) is an annual report that provides facts and figures about the incomes and living circumstances of households and families in the UK. The FRS uses a nationally representative sample of UK households and includes data on benefit receipt, at both individual and family levels.
The latest FRS is available for 2023/24 and, in the ‘Income and state support data tables’, Table 2.14a shows the number of benefit units in the UK by the total amount of annual state support received for that financial year, plus the two preceding years. This data is also available in the ‘FRS Family 2’ table in the Family (Benefit Unit) Dataset on Stat-Xplore. Please read the notes which accompany these tables.
The number of families who received in excess of £28,000, can be extracted from the Family (Benefit Unit) Dataset on Stat-Xplore by using the custom range functionality (which is available to registered users) on the Family (Benefit Unit), total, annual amount of Income received from State Support, in bands, in latest prices (CPI-adjusted real terms) data by using the ‘Range’ option in the ‘Measures’ section.
You can register or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user and, if needed, you can access guidance on how to extract the information required. In addition there is also the FRS Stat-Xplore User Guide.