Asked by: Lord Kinnock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what applications for support have been submitted to the EU Globalisation Adjustment Fund since its inception; whether they intend to submit an application for support in order to support workers made redundant from the steel industry in the last year; and if not, why not.
Answered by Lord Freud
The European Globalisation Fund (EGF) provides a financial contribution for active labour market measures, aimed at reintegrating those made or at risk of being made redundant in the labour market.
Member States are responsible in the first instance for tackling trade adjustment redundancies - the fund is therefore designed to add to national, regional and local assistance.
The UK already offers a broad range of personalised support to workers made redundant through its Rapid Response Service and Jobcentre Plus, which could not be duplicated or substituted by EGF.
The Rapid Response Service and the Jobcentre Plus Core Offer are effective reintegration tools which represent good value for money and are our primary and most helpful means of response to large redundancies.
For this reason, the UK Government has never applied to the EGF.
In addition to the aforementioned support, in the case of the steel industry, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has also announced packages of support worth up to £80 million for SSI in Redcar and up to £9 million for TATA Steel in Scunthorpe.
Only if more support is necessary other suitable sources of support will be considered.
Asked by: Lord Kinnock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of all (1) in-work, and (2) out-of-work, benefits paid in the UK as at March 2013 was received by recent EU migrants.
Answered by Lord Freud
I refer the noble Lord to the answer given by my Rt. Hon. Friend the Minister for Employment (Ms. Esther McVey) in the House of Commons on 20 November 2014 to Question number 211618 as below:
While the Government checks the immigration status of benefit claimants to ensure the benefit is paid properly and to prevent fraud, traditionally that information has not been collected as part of the payment administrative systems.
However, the Government is looking at ways to reform the current administrative system under Universal Credit so that it will systematically record nationality and immigration status of migrants who make a claim.
The Government has made a radical series of changes over the last year to restrict the access by non-UK citizens from the European Economic Area to UK benefits and tax credits. This is in order to protect the UK’s benefit system and discourage people who have no established connection with the UK from moving here, unless they have a job or a genuine prospect of work, or have savings to support themselves until they do.
Asked by: Lord Kinnock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what were the average (1) in-work, and (2) out-of-work, benefits paid to all recent EU migrants supported by the benefits system as at March 2013.
Answered by Lord Freud
I refer the noble Lord to the answer given by my Rt. Hon. Friend the Minister for Employment (Ms. Esther McVey) in the House of Commons on 20 November 2014 to Question number 211618 as below:
While the Government checks the immigration status of benefit claimants to ensure the benefit is paid properly and to prevent fraud, traditionally that information has not been collected as part of the payment administrative systems.
However, the Government is looking at ways to reform the current administrative system under Universal Credit so that it will systematically record nationality and immigration status of migrants who make a claim.
The Government has made a radical series of changes over the last year to restrict the access by non-UK citizens from the European Economic Area to UK benefits and tax credits. This is in order to protect the UK’s benefit system and discourage people who have no established connection with the UK from moving here, unless they have a job or a genuine prospect of work, or have savings to support themselves until they do.
Asked by: Lord Kinnock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what was the duration of (1) in-work, and (2) out-of-work, benefits paid to all recent EU migrants in households supported by the benefits system as at March 2013.
Answered by Lord Freud
I refer the noble Lord to the answer given by my Rt. Hon. Friend the Minister for Employment (Ms. Esther McVey) in the House of Commons on 20 November 2014 to Question number 211618 as below:
While the Government checks the immigration status of benefit claimants to ensure the benefit is paid properly and to prevent fraud, traditionally that information has not been collected as part of the payment administrative systems.
However, the Government is looking at ways to reform the current administrative system under Universal Credit so that it will systematically record nationality and immigration status of migrants who make a claim.
The Government has made a radical series of changes over the last year to restrict the access by non-UK citizens from the European Economic Area to UK benefits and tax credits. This is in order to protect the UK’s benefit system and discourage people who have no established connection with the UK from moving here, unless they have a job or a genuine prospect of work, or have savings to support themselves until they do.
Asked by: Lord Kinnock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Freud on 30 December 2015 (HL4654), what (1) in-work, and (2) out-of-work, benefits were paid to recent EU migrants in households supported by the benefits system as at March 2013.
Answered by Lord Freud
I refer the noble Lord to the answer given by my Rt. Hon. Friend the Minister for Employment (Ms. Esther McVey) in the House of Commons on 20 November 2014 to Question number 211618 as below:
While the Government checks the immigration status of benefit claimants to ensure the benefit is paid properly and to prevent fraud, traditionally that information has not been collected as part of the payment administrative systems.
However, the Government is looking at ways to reform the current administrative system under Universal Credit so that it will systematically record nationality and immigration status of migrants who make a claim.
The Government has made a radical series of changes over the last year to restrict the access by non-UK citizens from the European Economic Area to UK benefits and tax credits. This is in order to protect the UK’s benefit system and discourage people who have no established connection with the UK from moving here, unless they have a job or a genuine prospect of work, or have savings to support themselves until they do.
Asked by: Lord Kinnock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will provide all factual evidence they have, together with their sources, that UK in-work and out-of-work benefits are a factor in encouraging immigration to the UK from other EU member states.
Answered by Lord Freud
The benefits system is one of a range of factors attracting migrants to Britain. Net migration to the UK stood at 336,000 in the year to June 2015 according to the November 2015 Migration Statistics Quarterly Report from the Office for National Statistics, and EU nationals are a significant contributor to recent increases. Meanwhile, an analysis of administrative data held by the Department for Work and Pensions showed that between 37% and 45% of all recent EU migrants were in households supported by the benefits system as of March 2013.
The Government has already introduced tough new measures to ensure that EU jobseekers will have no access to means-tested benefits whatsoever as Universal Credit is rolled out.
And now we want to ensure that the welfare system plays no part in the migration decisions of any EU national. The Prime Minister is therefore pursuing further reforms to ensure that EU migrants who come to the UK for low-paid work cannot claim in-work benefits until they have lived here and contributed to our country for a minimum of four years.
Asked by: Lord Kinnock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many personal independence payments have been claimed since introduction; how many of those claims have been processed; and, of those, how many are being paid to recipients of the disability living allowance which preceded personal independence payments.
Answered by Lord Freud
The requested information is in the table below. These statistics are available from the Personal Independence Payment statistics home page and will next be updated on 18 March 2015.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/personal-independence-payment-statistics
Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claims registered, cleared and awards in payment – at 31 October 2014
| |
All PIP claims registered, of which: | 669,200 |
New claims | 592,900 |
Reassessment Claims | 76,300 |
All PIP claims cleared, of which: | 382,000 |
New claims | 352,100 |
Reassessment claims | 29,900 |
All PIP awards in payment, of which: | 207,500 |
New Claims | 184,500 |
Reassessment claims | 23,000 |
Notes:
Source, DWP statistical release, published 17 December 2014 and Stat-Xplore.
Figures are rounded to the nearest 100.
Figures are for claims from people under the normal rules and special rules for those who are terminally ill.
“Reassessment claims” are claims to PIP from those who were entitled to Disability Living Allowance.