Asked by: Marsha De Cordova (Labour - Battersea)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will take steps to make the local District Provision Tool available to local partners in London to help (a) tackle youth unemployment and (b) increase education and training opportunities.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
A version of the District Provision Tool is available for local partners to use on GOV.UK and can be found at here.
Asked by: Beth Winter (Labour - Cynon Valley)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will review the Disability Confident scheme.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP is committed to strengthening the Disability Confident Scheme to ensure it remains credible, sufficiently challenging, and continues to support the employment of disabled people. Key to this is the implementation of the recommendations from the review including work to strengthen the criteria for all employers and tailoring the scheme for SMEs. On 9 April 2024 DWP published a revised version of the Disability Confident Line Manager’s Guide, in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), providing a range of guidance to support businesses of all sizes. Further changes to the scheme criteria stemming from these recommendations are well underway and we expect to have fully implemented them by the end of March 2025.
The Department is continuing to work with a wide range of stakeholders, including employers, disability charities, and disabled people’s organisations to develop, and grow the scheme to increase the number of inclusive employers in the UK.
Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support his Department provides to older jobseekers in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England who are looking to (i) reskill or (ii) change careers.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Eligible older jobseekers on Universal Credit benefit from Additional Work Coach Time (AWCT) and the delivery of Mid Life MOTs in Jobcentres across England which support people to review their health, wealth and skills.
77 50PLUS Champions are working in all 37 Districts across England, Wales and Scotland, and personalise support, including helping customers to reskill or change career.
At the 2023 Budget, the Chancellor announced increasing skills provision through Returnerships for those aged 50 and over which bring together three programmes to support older workers. These include Accelerated Apprenticeships, Skills Bootcamps and Sector-Based Work Academy Programmes (SWAPs).
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 pensioner households are entitled to but not in receipt of housing benefit.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP annually publishes estimates of benefit take up, which includes Housing Benefit for pensioners. The latest official statistics can be found here.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of people who claimed Carer's Allowance were caring for someone in receipt of a Personal Independence Payment in the past 12 months.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This information is only available at disproportionate cost to The Department for Work & Pensions as the Department does not have a business requirement for this information to be retained.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of people who claimed Carer's Allowance also claimed a Personal Independence Payment in the past 12 months.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This information is only available at disproportionate cost to The Department for Work & Pensions as the Department does not have a business requirement for this information to be retained.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
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 impact of his Department's proposed changes to Personal Independence Payments on unpaid carers.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Modernising Support for Independent Living: The Health and Disability Green Paper looks at different options to reshape the current welfare system so that we can provide better targeted support to those who need it most. We are considering these options through our 12-week consultation which was published on Monday 29 April and will close on Monday 22 July at 11:59pm. Any possible impacts on unpaid carers will be considered as necessary.
There will be no immediate changes to PIP, or to health assessments. All scheduled PIP assessments and payments will proceed as normal, and claimants should continue to engage as usual and provide any necessary information or updates regarding their circumstances.
We encourage everyone to respond to the consultation which can be found here, so that we are able to hear from as many disabled people, people with health conditions, their representatives, and local stakeholders as possible on these important issues.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people are awaiting a decision on their Access to Work applications as of 1 May 2024.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As of 1st May 2024, there were 36,184 applications awaiting a decision on their Access to Work application.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has plans to distinguish between (a) studio and (b) one bedroom apartments in Local Housing Allowance rates.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
A one-bedroom rate for the calculation of Local Housing Allowance is defined as accommodation where the tenant has the exclusive use of only one bedroom and exclusive use of a kitchen, a bathroom, a toilet and a room suitable for living in. This includes studio apartments. There are no plans to change this definition.
Housing support is calculated according to the number of bedrooms a person needs based on the size of their household.
The maximum housing costs support is the lower of the actual rent and service charges or the relevant Local Housing Allowance rate.
Asked by: Beth Winter (Labour - Cynon Valley)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make it his policy to support the establishment of accessibility champions in each Department.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We already have a Ministerial Disability Champion in each government department.
At the request of the Prime Minister, the first Ministerial Disability Champions were appointed in summer 2020, to drive the development and delivery of the National Disability Strategy (NDS).
Their role is to:
The Ministerial Disability Champions meet regularly throughout the year. The Minister of State for Disabled People, Health and Work, Mims Davies MP, is the chair.
A full list of Ministerial Disability Champions can be found on Gov.UK here.