Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many advanced universal credit payments have been issued in Dunfermline and West Fife constituency since 1 March 2020; and what the cost was of those payments to the nearest thousand pounds.
Answered by Will Quince
Between 1 March 2020 and 16 June 2020 inclusive, 2,310 Universal Credit advance payments were issued to the Dunfermline and West Fife parliamentary constituency totalling a value of £1,013,000.
Notes:
1. Volumes are rounded to the nearest 10 and values to the nearest £1000.
2. Figures include all types of advances, including advances paid after the first assessment period.
3. Figures provided to 16 June 2020 in line with published management information relating to Universal Credit advances.
4. If a claimant has applied for more than one advance, each one is counted separately in these figures.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will ensure that clients who have overpaid their child maintenance payments due to departmental error will have those monies refunded within four weeks of the error being discovered.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Where overpayments of Child Maintenance occur, these are routinely adjusted from any future Child Maintenance payments due.
Where an overpayment occurs due to incorrect allocation to a case, action to rectify this usually takes place within 48 hours.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will investigate complaints of departmental errors made under the Child Maintenance Scheme; and if she will make a statement on the outcome of that investigation.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
All complaints received by Child Maintenance Service are investigated. Customers who remain dissatisfied can then escalate their complaint and request a fully independent investigation to be completed by the Independent Case Examiner then the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
Accuracy of Child Maintenance Service processes is also subject to scrutiny from Counter Fraud & Compliance Directorate, Government Internal Audit Agency and National Audit office.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Answer of 8 October 2019 to Question 294182, how many employers in Dunfermline and West Fife constituency have not met their duties pertaining to the automatic enrolment of employees in a workplace pension scheme.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Automatic enrolment has achieved a quiet revolution through getting employees into the habit of pension saving, and reversing the decline in workplace pension participation in the decade prior to these reforms. Since automatic enrolment started in 2012 participation rates have been transformed with 87% of eligible employees saving into a workplace pension in 2018, up from 55% in 2012.
The Department does not hold data for individual constituencies in relation to non-compliance of employers.
The Pensions Regulator’s data on automatic enrolment declaration of compliance by constituency is available via the following weblink: https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/document-library/research-and-analysis/data-requests
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
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 have (a) opted out after being auto-enrolled into a workplace pension and (b) saved more than the auto-enrolment minimum contribution in the Dunfermline and West Fife constituency in the most recent period for which figures are available.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Automatic enrolment has achieved a quiet revolution through getting employees into the habit of pension saving, and reversing the decline in workplace pension participation in the decade prior to these reforms. Since automatic enrolment started in 2012 participation rates have been transformed with 87% of eligible employees saving into a workplace pension in 2018, up from 55% in 2012.
The Department does not hold data for individual constituencies in relation to opt outs or the number of individuals who have saved above the automatic enrolment minimum contribution level. However, we do know that overall around 9% of automatically enrolled workers have chosen to opt out which is significantly below original estimates; and our latest evaluation report shows that, in April 2017, approximately 5.9 million eligible employees were already meeting the April 2019 minimum contribution rates.
I am providing the following information about the impact of automatic enrolment in your constituency, as of August 2019:
In the Dunfermline and West Fife constituency, since 2012, approximately 7,000 eligible jobholders have been automatically enrolled and 1,310 employers have met their duties.
Automatic Enrolment Evaluation Report 2018, available via the following weblink: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/764964/Automatic_Enrolment_Evaluation_Report_2018.pdf.
The Pensions Regulator’s data on Automatic enrolment declaration of compliance by constituency, available via the following weblink: https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/document-library/research-and-analysis/data-requests
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time taken was to process a mandatory reconsideration for personal independence payment in the last 12 months for which information is available.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Statistics on the median clearance times for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Mandatory Reconsiderations (MR) are provided in Tables 7C-E of the “Personal Independence Payment: April 2013 to July 2019” publication, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-independence-payment-april-2013-to-july-2019
Information about the extremes of a distribution (e.g. the maximum clearance times) does potentially risk leading to the identification of the claimant. We would not release this information publicly. Therefore, we have presented information on the upper quartile of clearance times.
For the 12 months from August 2018 to end of July 2019, for Great Britain the upper quartile was 68 calendar days, with a median of 49 days as published.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the maximum time taken was to process a mandatory reconsideration for personal independence payment in the last 12 months for which information is available.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Statistics on the median clearance times for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Mandatory Reconsiderations (MR) are provided in Tables 7C-E of the “Personal Independence Payment: April 2013 to July 2019” publication, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-independence-payment-april-2013-to-july-2019
Information about the extremes of a distribution (e.g. the maximum clearance times) does potentially risk leading to the identification of the claimant. We would not release this information publicly. Therefore, we have presented information on the upper quartile of clearance times.
For the 12 months from August 2018 to end of July 2019, for Great Britain the upper quartile was 68 calendar days, with a median of 49 days as published.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many paying parents are in maintenance arrears through the Child Maintenance Service; and how much unpaid maintenance remains outstanding in Dunfermline and West Fife constituency.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
At the end of June 2019, there were 260 Paying Parents with unpaid maintenance in the Dunfermline and West Fife constituency. The total amount of unpaid maintenance associated with these Paying Parents was £386,000.
Please note the following points:
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reason Regulation 4(1) of the Child Support (Child Support Maintenance) Calculations Regulations 2012 provides that a relevant tax year for the calculation of child maintenance by a paying parent is any one of the six years immediately preceding the date of request and not the most recent year for which tax data is available.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
To make an initial maintenance assessment, regulations provide that HM Revenue & Customs share income information for the most recent complete tax year they hold within the previous six years. This process is repeated annually to ensure the assessment is based on the most recent data HMRC hold and in line with a paying parent’s circumstances.
More recent income data can be used in specific circumstances where a paying parent’s income has changed in a way that breaks the 25% tolerance, requiring their calculation to move from historic to current income.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the time taken for benefit claimants to receive decision letters containing a four week deadline for appeal by post; and what assessment she has made of the effect of postal delays on the time available for claimants to make an appeal.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Appeals about DWP decisions are made directly to Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS).
Our correspondence, including decision letters, is issued via 2nd class post in keeping with our responsibility to efficiently use public funds; so we expect it to arrive within three working days, including Saturdays.
There are no plans to change the start date of the period to make an appeal. The extension of that period, including the consideration of any postal delay, is made by HMCTS.