Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of local discretionary council housing payments being made available people who are in work but do not have savings.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Discretionary Housing Payments are administered by Local Authorities who are best placed to make informed judgements about relative priorities and needs in their area to ensure that the most vulnerable are supported and the funds are targeted effectively. They are available to people who are in receipt of benefits or are working and entitled to either Housing Benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit, and experiencing a shortfall in their housing costs.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent progress has been made on the Pensions Dashboard Prototype project.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) led Dashboard Project Group delivered a prototype in April 2017, this proved that technology to connect everyone with their pensions in one place can be built. Following this the ABI-led Pensions Dashboard Project published their report “Reconnecting people with their pensions” in October 2017. This set out research findings and a number of recommendations on taking forward the project.
Within government DWP assumed responsibility for pensions dashboard policy from HMT on 19th October 2017. At Report stage of the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, on 27th October, Baroness Buscombe announced that the DWP would undertake a feasibility study and she set out the aims of the study.
We will be reporting the findings of the feasibility study in the Spring setting out next steps for the development and delivery of a pension dashboard.