Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to make changes to Department for Work and Pensions rules that impact on the ability of refugees to claim jobseeker's allowance and simultaneously access full-time English language lessons.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
One of the conditions of Jobseeker’s Allowance is that the recipient must be available for work. This is why it is not an appropriate benefit for those who are studying full time.
However, Refugees who are new to the UK can claim Income Support if they are learning English language for 15 hours or more per week. This is in recognition that for this particular group, integration and employment will be made more possible if they have a basic understanding of the English language.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report Let's Talk, published by Scope; and how they intend to respond to its recommendations,
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
The Government is committed to supporting disabled people and people with long term health conditions to enter, remain in, and return to work, and to deliver the health benefits that good work brings. We are committed to seeing 1 million more disabled people in work in the next 10 years. This autumn we will provide an update on the recent work we’ve been doing on work, health and disability and respond to the consultation we held on the ‘Improving Lives: Work: Health and Disability Green Paper’, and set out our next steps.
We welcome the contributions that the Scope report makes to the debate and note its recommendations.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to provide employers with information and advice on how to support their disabled employees.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
We continue to work with employers to support and encourage them to build healthy, inclusive workplaces where disabled people and people with health conditions can thrive.
Through Disability Confident we are getting employers to think differently about disability and to take action to improve how they attract, recruit and retain disabled workers. The Department is constantly looking to improve the Disability Confident offer to employers that sign up and to do this we have introduced a specialist themed approach, offering additional advice, guidance and support on a wide range of topics such as Mental Health, Autism and Neuro-diversity and Reasonable adjustments.
The Department is also working more directly with smaller employers through the new Small Employer Offer, which provides small employers with a personalised package of support including advice from specialist advisers.
Finally, Access to Work provides practical and financial support for employers and employees with the additional costs faced by individuals whose health or disability affects the way they do their job. The scheme does not replace the duty an employer has under the Equality Act to make reasonable adjustments, instead it provides support that is over and above that.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, when they publish the statistics on the number of recipients of Employment and Support Allowance benefit who died between November 2011 and May 2014, whether they will be published in the same format as those published in 2012, and if not, why not.
Answered by Lord Freud
The format of any publication is a matter for the Head of Profession of Statistics who ensures the required standards are followed. The publication is still in development and the final format has yet to be determined.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, when they publish the statistics on the number of recipients of Employment and Support Allowance benefit who died between November 2011 and May 2014 who had been found fit for work or told they could move towards getting work, whether these figures will be in a form that will allow comparisons with previous statistics.
Answered by Lord Freud
The format of any publication is a matter for the Head of Profession of Statistics who ensures the required standards are followed. The publication is still in development and the final format has yet to be determined.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they have responded to the ruling of the Information Commissioner regarding the publication of statistics on deaths related to Employment and Support Allowance benefit; and when they intend to publish this data.
Answered by Lord Freud
The Department has lodged an appeal with the First Tier Tribunal against the Information Commissioner’s decision notice of 30 April 2015.
The statistics the Department intend to publish will be pre-announced on the GOV.UK website.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, with regard to the compensation payments awarded under the Mesothelioma Act 2014, what is their estimate of (1) the difference between the actuarial calculations on which they based their assumptions for payments of compensation and the payments now being made by insurance companies; and (2) how much such companies will save in each of the next 10 years compared with the original legislative assumptions.
Answered by Baroness Altmann
No actuarial calculations were carried out in relation to the payments that would be made by the Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme. The tariff table, which sets out the rate of payment according to age at diagnosis, is based on an average of similar payments made under civil compensation.
The Impact Assessment published in March 2014 estimated that £93.7m would be paid out by the Scheme in the first year of its operation, and £412.4m would be paid out over the first 10 years.
Initial application volumes were lower than anticipated so the amount levied on the insurance industry for the period 2014/15 was £32m. It is too early to estimate what the application volumes will be over the next 10 years given volumes received to date. As this is a demand led scheme, the calculations for the levy are done afresh each year. An upturn in applications to the Scheme would result in a higher levy rate in future years.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Statement by Lord Freud on 22 July 2013 (WS 152) that the Department for Work and Pensions had engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to provide independent advice in relation to strengthening quality assurance processes across all its health and disability assessments, when the results of that audit will be published.
Answered by Lord Freud
This was an internal review completed more than a year ago. Since then significant improvements have been introduced. As such, the review is out of date and the Department has no plans to publish the findings.