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Written Question
Employment and Support Allowance: Pontypridd
Friday 21st January 2022

Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)

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 number of people who have been affected by the underpayment of benefits after transitioning from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance in Pontypridd constituency.

Answered by Chloe Smith

I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 19th January to question number 104377.


Written Question
Department for Work and Pensions: Official Hospitality
Wednesday 15th December 2021

Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether any social events took place between three or more people within her Departmental buildings between (a) 5 November 2020 and 1 December 2020 and (b) 16 December 2020 and 22 February 2021.

Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

This information is not collected. At the time, staff were expected to work from home and undertake meetings remotely, wherever possible.


Written Question
Universal Credit
Monday 30th November 2020

Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)

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 number of people whose universal credit payments have incurred errors in (a) Wales, (b) England and (c) the UK, in each year since 2015.

Answered by Will Quince

The Department is committed to ensuring we are paying the right people the right amount of Universal Credit.

We published our annual ‘Fraud and error in the benefit system: financial year 2019 to 2020 estimates’ report in May 2020, and this includes information and data across benefit types, including Universal Credit. It can be accessed online using the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2019-to-2020-estimates.

Data for previous financial years is also available via.gov.uk; however, changes in recording methodology mean that comparisons cannot be made with years prior to 2018/19.

The vast majority of benefit expenditure is paid correctly, with front line staff working hard to prevent overpayments from occurring. We are constantly improving our processes and continue to invest in the use of data and analytics to identify fraud and error.

Once rolled out, DWP expects the high-level design of Universal Credit to lead to around £1bn in benefit savings each year from reduced fraud and error.


Written Question
Personal Independence Payment: Wales
Thursday 8th October 2020

Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people claimed personal independence payments on the basis of a degenerative neurological condition in (a) Wales and (b) Pontypridd constituency in each year since 2010.

Answered by Justin Tomlinson

The information you requested is not held by the Department. In the application process, claimants’ main disabling condition is only recorded for collation by the Department at assessment. It is not recorded at the point of application. The Department does not therefore hold data on the number of applicants to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) with particular conditions. Only those who have a disability assessment determination decision will have a main disabling condition recorded for them.

We do collect data on the main disability condition for those who have had a PIP clearance. The latest available data on PIP registrations and clearances split by geographical area (including region and parliamentary constituency), main disability, and by type of clearance (i.e. whether the claim was awarded, disallowed or withdrawn) for both new claims and reassessed claims, can be found at https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/

Guidance on how to use Stat-Xplore can be found here:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/index.html.


Written Question
Personal Independence Payment: Coronavirus
Thursday 8th October 2020

Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average clearance time frame was for her Department to process a new personal independence payment claim in the period from March 2020 to August 2020; and what that average time taken was in that same period in 2019; and if she will make a statement.

Answered by Justin Tomlinson

The latest available data on Personal Independence Payment (PIP) clearance times covers claims cleared up to the end of July 2020. Therefore, the average clearance times are calculated from March 2020 to July 2020, and March 2019 to July 2019 respectively for comparison.

The median end to end clearance time for PIP New Claims in Great Britain for Normal Rules claimants was 21 weeks for claims cleared from March 2020 to July 2020, and was 15 weeks for claims cleared from March 2019 to July 2019.

[In Wales, the median end to end clearance time for PIP New Claims for Normal Rules claimants was 14 weeks for claims cleared from March 2020 – July 2020 and was 16 weeks for claims cleared from March 2019 – July 2019.]

Changes in the average end to end clearance time across from March 2020 to July 2020 reflect disruption due to COVID-19, including the development, testing and successful rollout of a new telephony assessment model to enable claims to be progressed robustly in the absence of face-to-face assessments to ensure we were not putting vulnerable people and our staff at risk.

Notes

Source: PIP ADS

  • PIP data includes normal rules claimants only and is for new claims only.
  • Figures have been rounded to the nearest whole number of weeks.
  • The status of claims as 'normal rules' and 'new claim/reassessment' is shown as at the point of clearance.
  • The figures quoted are the median clearance time of claims which are cleared in the given time period.
  • The median time is the middle value if you were to order all the times within the distribution from lowest value to highest value. The median is presented here instead of the mean because the mean can be unduly affected by outlying cases (e.g. cases where the person has been hard to reach due to being in prison, hospital, failed to attend the assessment on numerous occasions etc.)
  • The 'Registration to DWP decision (end to end)' clearance time is measured as the median time between the date of registration of the claim and the date of the DWP decision to either award or disallow the claim. It does not include claims that were withdrawn by the claimant or claims that were disallowed by DWP pre-referral to the Assessment Providers (e.g. for failure to meet basic eligibility criteria or failure to return the Part 2 form within the time limit).
  • Great Britain only.
  • The median clearance times for March 2019 – July 2019 and March 2020 – July 2020 are unpublished data. It should be used with caution and it may be subject to future revision.
  • From late March 2020 onwards, disruption due to COVID-19 affected volumes of clearances for all activities - Assessment Providers switched to paper based and telephony assessments rather than face to face assessments, and in the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic efforts were made to clear residual claims in the system from before emergency measures were put in place, giving rise to an initial spike in clearance volumes. During the quarter ending July 2020, the effects of the disruption due to COVID-19 have reduced in some areas though they continue in many parts of the process.

Written Question
Universal Credit: Children
Thursday 3rd September 2020

Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit applications her Department has received from claimants citing that a third or subsequent child was conceived as a result of rape in each year since 2015; and how many of those applications were received in (a) each UK region and nation and (b) the Pontypridd constituency in each of those years.

Answered by Will Quince

The policy to provide support for a maximum of two children was implemented in 2017. Statistics related to the policy, by nation, was published in July 2020 and can be accessed at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-tax-credit-and-universal-credit-claimants-statistics-related-to-the-policy-to-provide-support-for-a-maximum-of-2-children-april-2020

The table below provides data on the Number of Households Exempt from the policy to provide support for a maximum of two children due to Non-Consensual Conception, at April 2019 and April 2020.

Apr-20

Apr-19

East Midlands

20

10

East of England

30

10

London

50

10

North East

10

10

North West

50

10

South East

40

10

South West

20

10

West Midlands

50

20

Yorkshire and The Humber

30

10

Scotland

30

10

Wales

20

0

TOTAL (GB)

360

90

Notes:

  1. Regional information is only available for approximately 97% of data
  2. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10
  3. A number of households have exemptions in more than one category. They are counted once in each appropriate category and only once in the total

Due to Statistical disclosure controls data is not available for 2018 or at constituency level, to avoid the release of confidential data.


Written Question
Universal Credit: Children
Thursday 3rd September 2020

Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit applications her Department has (a) received from claimants citing that a third or subsequent child was conceived as a result of rape and (b) rejected as a result of a third or subsequent child being born after 5 April 2017.

Answered by Will Quince

Statistics related to the policy to provide support for a maximum of two children was published in July 2020 and can be accessed at

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-tax-credit-and-universal-credit-claimants-statistics-related-to-the-policy-to-provide-support-for-a-maximum-of-2-children-april-2020


Written Question
Kickstart Scheme
Thursday 3rd September 2020

Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's oral statement of 8 July 2020, Official Report, column 973, on Economic Update, when employers will be able to apply to employ a young person through the Kickstart Scheme.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Kickstart scheme was opened to employers to apply on 2 September 2020.


Written Question
Kickstart Scheme
Thursday 3rd September 2020

Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether new employers will be able to employ young people using the Kickstart scheme when that scheme is launched.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

We welcome applications to set up Kickstart roles from employers from public, private and voluntary sectors, of all sizes and from both established and new enterprises. All employers applying to the scheme will be subject to checks to verify that they are legitimate organisations and can appropriately support any Kickstart participant taking a role with them.