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 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 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.
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 total annual cost of his Department’s use of machine learning algorithms to identify fraudulent benefit claims is.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department does not record this information.
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 and what proportion of staff working on fraud and error in his Department work on (a) preventing fraud and error upfront and (b) detecting fraud and error after it has happened.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Tackling loss is a key priority for DWP and every member of staff undertakes mandatory annual fraud and error training.
Outside of this, we secured an additional £900 million in recent Spending Rounds which enabled us to enhance both our fraud and error prevention and detection capabilities. This includes our Targeted Case Review team which will review millions of Universal Credit claims for incorrectness.
As of the 31st March, our Targeted Case Review team currently has 3,100 Full Time equivalent agents reviewing Universal Credit claims.
As of the 31st March, our Counter Fraud, Compliance and Debt Directorate (which includes National Insurance allocation and Debt Management functions) has 8,700 Full Time Equivalent employees, of which 1,400 are working directly on the prevention of fraud and error, with 1,700 working on detection of fraud and error after it has happened.
To note - all figures have been rounded.
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 (a) large and (b) unusual underpayments have been referred for analysis since June 2023.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP measures its underpayments via annual national statistics published each May. However, we do not produce an estimate for the value of a benefit underpayment.
DWP conducts internal quality assurance checks focusing on financial accuracy and service quality.