Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment his Department has made of the need to provide financial support for employees made redundant before 23 September 2020 who cannot be furloughed and are not entitled to any statutory redundancy payment.
Answered by Will Quince
Universal Credit is in place to support claimants in difficult circumstances. The Government introduced a package of temporary welfare measures worth around £9.3 billion this year to help with the financial consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. This included the £20 weekly increase to the Universal Credit Standard Allowance rates as a temporary measure for the 20/21 tax year.
Our long-term ambition is to level up across the country and continue to tackle poverty through our reformed welfare system that works with the labour market to encourage people to move into and progress in work wherever possible.
Our £30bn Plan for Jobs is the first step on the ladder to achieving this and will support economic recovery through new schemes including Kickstart and Job Entry Targeted Support.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
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 need to remove the five-week wait for universal credit for employees made redundant prior to 23 September 2020 and who are not eligible for statutory redundancy pay.
Answered by Will Quince
Nobody in need has to wait for a payment under Universal Credit (UC). UC New Claim Advances allow eligible claimants to receive up to 100% of their estimated Universal Credit payment upfront within a few days. Claimants will receive their annual award over 13 payments during their first year, instead of 12. They are paid quickly and can be applied for online or over the phone. These upfront payments can be spread across two years instead of one from October 2021, as announced in the 2020 Budget.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many times the universal credit service has been unavailable since 23 March 2020; and for what reasons that service was unavailable on each of those occasions.
Answered by Will Quince
There have been over 3 million Universal Credit claims made since mid-March; six times the volume that the Department would typically receive. Despite that surge, the system is standing up to the challenge and demonstrating that resilience and scalability are integral parts its design, whilst maintaining high levels of payment timeliness.
There have been no unplanned outages of the Universal Credit online service since March 2020.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
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 capacity of the universal credit service to cope with demand for new online claims in the period since 23 March 2020; and what steps her Department is taking to minimise periods of unavailability of that service.
Answered by Will Quince
There have been over 3 million Universal Credit claims made since mid-March; six times the volume that the Department would typically receive. Despite that surge, the system is standing up to the challenge and demonstrating that resilience and scalability are integral parts its design, whilst maintaining high levels of payment timeliness.
There have been no unplanned outages of the Universal Credit online service since March 2020.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the finding of the Financial Conduct Authority that pension scammers take on average £91,000 from each of their victims, what assessment her Department has made of additional protections required to protect UK pensioners (a) in the UK and (b) overseas from pension transfer scams.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Action was taken by the Pension Regulator, Financial Conduct Authority, and Money Advice and Pension Service on 7 April pointing to the actions members should seek to take to safeguard against becoming victims of scams. Additional guidance was issued to trustees, and providers from both The Financial Conduct Authority and the Pensions Regulator to support them to produce suitable communications during the Covid-19 outbreak.
Please see links below for more information about the joint statement from Regulators and the Money Advice Service, and help available, produced by the Pension Protection Fund and supported by government.
https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/covid-19-savers-stay-calm-dont-rush-financial-decisions
https://www.ppf.co.uk/sites/default/files/file-2020-05/COVID-19-and-your-pension.pdf
All of Government is committed to safeguarding consumer savings amongst those based in the UK and living overseas with UK based pension savings. We have adopted a layered approach building from interventions to assist all pension savers seeking to access their pensions to those who are most at risk of scams.
For all pension savers aged 50 and over, in the lead up to accessing their pension savings, our aim is to support them make informed choices about their retirement income. We are therefore committed to replicating measures introduced by the FCA for contract based schemes for occupational pension schemes and requiring trustees to provide information to pensions savers from the age of 50, in a simpler format, to encourage savers to think about their retirement savings, choices and raise awareness of Pension Wise.
We want to encourage savers with to take appropriate guidance (currently provided by MAPS under the Pension Wise brand) when they exercise their Pension Freedoms by applying to access savings. Recent trials showed a nudge to guidance during the application process is effective. We want to present taking guidance as a natural part of the journey when individuals access their pension savings. We are working with the FCA on rules that would require managers of private pension schemes to Introduce parallel provisions.
Although the majority of transfers are to safe destinations there are still fraudsters who try to entice individuals to transfer to schemes for the purposes of relieving them of their pension savings.
To help protect people from pension scams, government has introduced an amendment to clause 125 in the Pension Schemes Bill 2020 limiting the statutory right to transfer The clause achieves two things:
In addition, the Government, working with the regulators and the Money and Pension Service, has been communicating with pension savers to alert them to the risk of scams in the current climate. DWP continues to communicate regularly on social media about the warning signs of a scam.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made for the implications of her policy of the Court of Appeal judgment handed down on 22 June 2020 on the Universal Credit system; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Will Quince
The Court of Appeal judgment affects a small minority of claimants in very specific circumstances, those who receive two calendar monthly payments of earnings in one assessment period and lose out on the work allowance. We recognise the impact that having double earnings in an assessment period can have on individual claimants and their ability to manage their finances.
While the court judgment does not require us to fix this issue by a particular date, we are currently working on ways to resolve this for claimants as soon as possible. We will keep the House updated as progress is made.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate her Department made of the proportion of claimants assessed for (a) personal independence payment and (b) employment support allowance who subsequently make a complaint about the (i) conduct and (b) content of the assessment report.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The information is not held in the specific categories requested.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Prime Minister, what contact his special advisors have had with (a) developers or (b) their representatives on the Westferry Printworks development, PA/18/01877/A1 which was granted planning permission by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on 14 January 2020.
Answered by Boris Johnson
Ministers and special advisers act in accordance with the MHCLG Guidance on Planning Propriety Issues. In that light, No10 Ministers and special advisers would not discuss the details of live planning applications with MHCLG Planning Ministers. Any representations by other Government departments to a called-in or recovered planning application being considered by MHCLG would be disclosed as part of the evidence to the planning inquiry.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of removing the cap on discretionary housing payments to enable local authorities to provide support to households affected by covid-19.
Answered by Will Quince
We have already provided £180m in Discretionary Housing Payment(DHP) funding to Local Authorities to support vulnerable claimants with housing costs in the private and social rented sector in England and Wales for 2020/21. This includes an extra £40m as announced last year at the spending round.
In addition to the central government contribution, Local Authorities in England and Wales are able to top up DHP funding up to a maximum of two and a half times this figure using their own funds.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that employment support allowance and new style employment support allowance applications (a) can be made online and (b) are processed urgently during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
On average we are processing ‘new style’ Employment and Support Allowance (NSESA) claims in 2.2 days but we recognise people will have found it difficult to speak to us given the volume of traffic, and so we have fast-tracked the development of an online application process for NSESA, which went live on 20 April. This will allow the majority of people who need to claim this benefit to do so online. The NSESA claim phone lines are still available for people who do not have access to, or who cannot, use the online system. DWP have prioritised the clearance of all benefit claims by moving colleagues to front line processing roles, which has significantly increased our capacity and we are endeavouring to clear claims received as quickly as possible.
ESA is now closed as a means-tested benefit for new claimants in the majority of cases and working-age claimants with a disability or health condition should now make a claim to Universal Credit.