Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the staff turnover rate for his Department is as of 25 April 2024.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The departments turnover figures are only available at the end of each month. The DWP turnover rate as of 31st March 2024 is 7.3%.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress his Department has made on meeting its Greening Government Commitment targets.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP’s 2023/24 GGC performance is currently being collated and will be submitted to DEFRA at the end of May 2024. Therefore, 2022/23 is the latest full year of GGC data that is available and a summary of DWP’s performance (including our ALBs) against each of the headline GGC targets from 2022/23 is provided below. Further details of DWP’s performance (excluding ALBs) is available in DWP’s 2022/23 Annual Report and Accounts.
Target A: Mitigating climate change: working towards net zero by 2050
DWP reduced our total greenhouse gas emissions by 32% compared to the 17/18 baseline, which is on track to meet the target to reduce by 45% by 2024/25.
DWP reduced our direct greenhouse gas emissions by 1% compared to the 17/18 baseline. During the pandemic DWP took on c.200 additional properties to respond to national requirements. These buildings were still part of the estate in 2022/23 which impacted the direct greenhouse gas emissions performance; however, significant estate rationalisation has occurred during 2023/24 and we forecast we will meet the 2024/25 target to reduce by 17%.
Target B: Minimising waste and promoting resource efficiency
DWP reduced our total waste generated by 31% compared to the 2017/18 baseline, exceeding the target to reduce by 15% by 2024/25.
Target C: Minimising waste and promoting resource efficiency
DWP reduced our water consumption by 19% compared to the 2017/18 baseline, exceeding the target to reduce by 8% by 2024/25.
Target D: Procuring sustainable products and services
DWP has a sustainable procurement policy and ensures all procurement activities comply with the Government Buying Standards, meeting the target requirements.
Target E: Nature Recovery – making space for thriving plants and wildlife
DWP has developed a draft nature recovery plan and intend to finalise this before 2024/25 to meet the target requirements.
Target F: Adapting to climate change
DWP has developed a climate change adaptation strategy which includes a climate change risk assessment and climate change adaptation plan for its estates and operations, meeting the target requirements.
Target G: Reducing environmental impacts from information communication technology (ICT) and digital
DWP provide annual reporting data against the ICT & digital services strategy and provide membership to the sustainable technology advice and reporting team, meeting the target requirements.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many disabled people the Work and Health Programme support helps into work per year; and what estimate his Department has made of the number of how many disabled people that will be helped into work by Universal Support per year.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The latest Work and Health Programme statistics to November 2023 are published in the latest statistics on .GOV.UK and in Stat-Xplore.
There are three eligibility groups – disability, early access and long term unemployed. Up to November 2023, 77% of starts were from the disability group. For cohorts starting up to November 2021 (who had been on the programme for 24 months at the time of release) 47% had achieved first earnings and 32% achieved a job outcome. The number of job outcomes achieved in each year can be found in the table below:
Number of WHP job outcomes achieved per year in the disability group
| 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-2 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | Apr 2023- Nov-2023 | TOTAL |
Disability Group | 3,282 | 8,092 | 8,063 | 19,186 | 16,175 | 9,137 | 63,935 |
Note: there will also be disabled people in the early access group and long term unemployed, but we are unable to identify those people – therefore these numbers will be underestimates of the total numbers of disabled people who achieve job outcomes.
Further information about definitions are explained in the Work and Health Programme statistics: background information and methodology, in particular:
Universal Support will support up to 100,000 disabled people, people with health conditions and people with additional barriers to employment into sustained work per year, once fully rolled out.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 88 of his Department's Annual Report and Account 2022-23, what progress his Department has made on geographical case studies to understand local delivery challenges of the Restart programme.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The evaluation of the Restart Scheme, including research using geographical case studies, is being used to inform delivery of the Restart programme.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of roles in his Department are vacant as of 25 April 2024; and of those, how many and what proportion are not actively being recruited for.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP currently has 79,927 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) as at January 24. The proportion of roles in the Department that are vacant is not captured as DWP is currently managing a mix of recruitment to support growth whilst also replacing turnover in priority areas of Service Delivery. DWP is managing efficiencies where posts become vacant in non front line operational areas of the Department and decisions will be made on a case by case basis as to whether they will be recruited for.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Targeted Case Review agents there are as of 25 April 2024.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
As of the 31st of March, our Targeted Case Review team currently has 3,100 Full Time equivalent agents reviewing Universal Credit claims.
This is the most recent date for which data is available.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 10 of the National Audit Office's report entitled Report on Accounts: Department for Work & Pensions, published on 29 June 2023, what the level of assurance over the integrity of National Insurance records was compared to the previous report.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The administration of National Insurance Credits is a HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) function. DWP only use the data provided by HMRC.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 10 of the NAO's Report on Accounts 2022-2023, when his Department plans to report to Parliament on the impact of data analytics on protected groups and vulnerable claimants.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department will include its first assessment in its Report and Accounts 2023-24.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to paragraph 4.2 of the report by the National Audit Office entitled Department for Work and Pensions Accounts 2022-23, published on 6 July 2023, whether it remains his Department's plan to bring forward a Fraud and Error Bill.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
As mentioned by the Prime Minister on 19th April, we are also preparing a new fraud bill for the next Parliament, which will align DWP with HMRC so that we treat benefit fraud like tax fraud with new powers to make seizures and arrests and will also enable penalties to be applied to a wider set of fraudsters through a new civil penalty.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the cost per claim is for successfully identified fraudulent Universal Claims using his Department’s machine learning algorithm.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department does not record this information.