Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make it his policy to require businesses to admit guide dogs as part of the Disability Action Plan.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
Guide dog access is protected as a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act 2010. All businesses should be mindful of their duty to make reasonable adjustments to ensure disabled people are able to access goods and services.
The Disability Action Plan consultation has specific questions on guide dog access refusals. People who are reliant on guide dogs to access goods and services are encouraged to make their views known via the fully accessible consultation which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/disability-action-plan-2023-to-2024.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people are recipients of Universal Credit in (a) Romford constituency and (b) the London Borough of Havering.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The latest available statistics on the number of people who are on Universal Credit, by Westminster parliamentary constituency and by local authority, are published monthly on Stat-Xplore.
You can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user and, if needed, you can access guidance on how to extract the information required.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that welfare support is available to the most vulnerable people.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The government is committed to supporting vulnerable customers. This year we will spend around £79bn on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions around 3% of GDP. We are also committed to ensuring those who are entitled to benefit take it up. For this reason an extra £22 million investment was announced in March to extend free and impartial support through Help to Claim, delivered by Citizens Advice, to help people claim Universal Credit, and we are currently undertaking a campaign to increase the take-up of Pension Credit.
The department’s key obligation is to ensure that customers receive the correct benefit entitlement at the right time. We consider a customer’s particular circumstances to provide the right service or ensure appropriate support and can help direct our customers to the most appropriate body to meet their needs.
The department has appointed more than 30 Advanced Customer Support Senior Leaders (ACSSLs) across Great Britain. Their role is to reach across local communities to underpin our relationships with other organisations that provide support to our customers.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to improve advice to job seekers.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Department for Work and Pensions is committed to providing the best possible support for all our claimants. We are continuously reviewing and improving the service to ensure that it is accessible and responsive to their needs.
The department provides advice and support to jobseekers receiving benefits through our network of Jobcentres. Our Work Coaches engage with claimants on the basis of their individual need to provide advice on finding a job, help with retraining or skills advice, job applications and access to new vacancies, as well as signposting to our JobHelp website.
The JobHelp campaign offers job search advice and showcases priority sectors and job vacancies to help people successfully find work. The JobHelp website also provides help to get work experience and signposting to initiatives such as Access to work.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people are in receipt of Jobseekers' Allowance in Havering.
Answered by Guy Opperman
Statistics on the number of individuals on Jobseekers' Allowance at the end of each quarter, broken down by local authority, are published on Stat-Xplore.
If needed, you can access guidance on how to extract the information required from Stat-Xplore.
Monthly statistics for those on Jobseeker’s Allowance are available by local authority on NOMIS, with guidance available here.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to work with external parties and agencies to ensure that blind and partially sighted people are able to meet the rising cost of living.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The Secretary of State for DWP and I remain committed to improving disabled people’s lives and continue to meet colleagues across Government to push this important work forward.
The Government understands that people across the UK are worried about the rising cost of living and are seeing their disposable incomes decrease as they spend more on the essentials. Decisive action is needed to get households and businesses through this winter and the next, while ensuring we act in a fiscally responsible way.
Over the summer, a number of meetings and focus groups have taken place to hear disabled people's experiences, including one which was set up jointly with RNIB. Alongside this, officials continue to engage with stakeholders to build the evidence base on how the cost of living is impacting disabled people. This information will feed into the Government’s considered response.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many pensioners in the Romford constituency were in receipt of pension credit in the latest period for which figures are available.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The latest published data shows there were 1,746 Pension Credit claimants in Romford constituency.
Estimates for the number of Pension Credit claimants per constituency can be found on Stat-Xplore. The latest data is for November 2021.
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk
Guidance for using Stat-Xplore is available at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
Pension Credit applications and take up have improved dramatically following the Pension Credit awareness campaign in April, and the Pension Credit day of action on 15 June; this involved work with broadcasters, media, newspapers and other stakeholder partners who were encouraged to reach out to pensioners to promote Pension Credit through their channels.
Although not all claims can be directly attributed to the campaign, early indications are that the day of action has been highly effective. Our internal management information suggests there have been over 10,000 Pension Credit claims made during the week of the media day – an increase of 275% compared to the same week in 2021, which itself was an enhanced week due to the 2021 Pension credit Action Day.
The impact of these claim volumes on numbers of successful awards and on Pension Credit take-up will take longer to establish given the usual cycle involved in producing those statistics. However, the campaign is ongoing including a particular focus on getting the private sector to drive forward efforts to enhance claims, and specific effort to reach out to communities who have traditionally not claimed pension credit. That work is very much ongoing.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people have been convicted for benefit fraud in (a) Romford, (b) the London Borough of Havering and (c) the UK in each of the last five years.
Answered by David Rutley
DWP does not hold the requested information broken down to local geographical level.
Across England, Scotland and Wales, the number of convictions for benefit fraud over the last 5 full financial years is as follows*:
*Figures – which are rounded to the nearest 100 – are based on internal management information and therefore have not been subject to the same degree of scrutiny and quality assurance as an official statistic
In 2017, the department increased the prosecution threshold from £2000 to £5,000.
However, any case over £3000 is routed to DWP Investigations team.
This meant most could generate better returns for the taxpayer by allowing trained investigators to focus on serious fraud. However, we reserve the right to refer any case for prosecution. Compliance Officers continue to conduct robust and challenging interviews in all other scenarios and all debt is recoverable.
In addition, the department diverted resources to tackle Advances Fraud in 2019, which is demonstrated by a corresponding increase in Administrative Penalties.
Figures for the last 2 years reflect the re-deployment of staff to help meet the unprecedented demand for financial support during Covid and the social distancing measures put in place, which constrained our ability to carry out face to face Interviews Under Caution.
We continue to recruit Investigators and now have Covid compliant interview facilities in place, which means we expect to see a significant upturn in prosecution numbers over the next 2 years.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many recipients of (a) Universal Credit and (b) Personal Independence Payment reside in Romford constituency as of 27 June 2022.
Answered by Chloe Smith
Monthly statistics on the number of people who are on (a) Universal Credit (UC) and (b) Personal Independence Payment (PIP), by Westminster parliamentary constituency, can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many pensioners are in receipt of pension credit in Romford constituency as of 27 June 2022.
Answered by Guy Opperman
In November 2021, there were an estimated 1,746 Pension Credit claimants in Romford constituency.
Estimates for the number of Pension Credit claimants per constituency can be found on Stat-Xplore. The latest data is for November 2021.
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk
Guidance for using Stat-Xplore is available at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html