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Written Question
Unemployed People
Monday 25th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

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 of working age in (a) Lincolnshire, (b) East Midlands and (c) England are (i) not working and (ii) not looking for a job.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

The information requested is available at: https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/default.asp

Guidance for users can be found at: https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/home/newuser.asp


Written Question
Jobcentres: Translation Services
Monday 25th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

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 cost to the public purse of translating languages in Job Centres since 2015.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

The information requested is not readily available and to provide it will incur disproportionate cost.


Written Question
Pension Credit: Veterans
Monday 25th March 2024

Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many veterans received Pension Credit in the 2022-23 financial year.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The information requested is not collected and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.


Written Question
Household Support Fund: Lewisham
Monday 25th March 2024

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department provided Lewisham Council with an impact assessment on the discontinuation of funding for the Household Support Fund from March 2024.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

The government is providing an additional £500m to enable the extension of the Household Support Fund, including funding for the Devolved Administrations through the Barnett formula to be spent at their discretion. This means that Local Authorities in England will receive an additional £421m to support those in need locally through the Household Support Fund.

The funding will be available to Local Authorities in England from 1 April 2024 and will run until 30 September 2024.


Written Question
Children: Maintenance
Monday 25th March 2024

Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce call waiting times to the child maintenance service; and whether he has made a recent assessment of the adequacy of call handling times by that service.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

As part of its Modernisation Programme, CMS continues to improve how it communicates with customers and how customers access its service. When a customer first applies for CMS they are enrolled on the online service which provides them the ability to update their information and request changes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The majority of our customers make use of these online services to effectively meet their needs every day, though we are actively engaged in improving the service further and increasing customer take up.

We recognise some customers need alternative methods to contact us or choose to call us, and on occasion call wait times on our inbound phone lines can be longer than we would like. Speed to answer is continually reviewed throughout the working day and operational resource is regularly reviewed and flexed to minimise excessive wait times.

Over the coming year we will increase customer education on what can be raised and progressed using our online services and encourage more customers to make use of this as the primary channel for their CMS enquiries. This will help protect our inbound phones lines for our customers that need to access our service in this way and reduce the wait time they experience.


Written Question
Universal Credit: Uprating
Monday 25th March 2024

Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing universal credit by 50% in financial year 2024-25.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

There are no plans to make such an assessment.


Written Question
Personal Independence Payment
Monday 25th March 2024

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, with reference to his Department's publication entitled Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper, published on 16 March 2023, what progress his Department has made on the test of the feasibility of sharing assessment reports with Personal Independent Payment applicants before a decision is made; and when he plans to publish the findings.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

We are currently conducting a test to understand the impact of sharing assessment reports with PIP claimants by default. As part of the evaluation, we will gather insight from claimants to understand whether sharing the assessment report provides them with the opportunity to clarify evidence so that we can make the right decision as early as possible and improve trust and transparency in the decision-making process. Once the analysis of that insight is complete, we will consider next steps.


Written Question
Access to Work Programme
Monday 25th March 2024

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 were waiting for a decision on their Access to Work application on 1 March 2024.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

As of 1st March 2024, there were 29,871 applications awaiting a decision.

Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.


Written Question
Poverty: Children
Monday 25th March 2024

Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has had recent discussions with (a) Unicef and (b) the United Nations Rapporteur on extreme poverty on initiatives to tackle child poverty.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

DWP officials engage with a wide range of stakeholders including UNICEF.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Children
Monday 25th March 2024

Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)

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 total revenue accrued by the Exchequer since the introduction of the two child limit; and how many and what proportion of households are impacted in (i) England, (ii) Scotland, (iii) Wales, (iv) Northern Ireland and (v) each parliamentary constituency in the latest period for which data is available.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

The latest statistics, which include breakdowns by Region and Local Authority are published here: Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit claimants: statistics related to the policy to provide support for amaximum of 2 children, April 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The information requested on savings is not available.

Statistics related to the policy to provide support for a maximum of 2 children, by Parliamentary Constituencies isn’t currently available.