Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many officials employed by his Department, of each grade, have remained at that grade since 2010 but received a pay rise; and how much of a rise each such person at each such grade has received.
Answered by Steve Webb
To provide this information would incur disproportionate costs.
For 2012 and 2013, because of the nature of the awards applied to delegated grades, staff would have received a 1% increase on base pay whether they remained in grade or were promoted during the year subject to standard eligibility criteria.
DWP does not have contractual progression. All our employees are subject to the pay freeze and pay caps in place since 2010. In May 2010 the Government announced a two year pay freeze for civil servants earning over £21,000. The pay freeze applied to this Department in 2010 and 2011.
For staff earning under £21,000, for both 2010 and 2011 DWP awarded staff a flat rate increase by grade of between £400 and £540. Additionally during 2010 the AA band minimum was increased by between £890 and £1060 (depending on location) which lead to a slightly higher increase for some staff. Following Cabinet Office rules, a small number who earned just over £21,000 received smaller payments, using a taper system, to ensure that they were not ‘leapfrogged’ by peers slightly lower down the pay scale.
In 2012 and 2013 DWP awarded a 1% increase to the vast majority of our staff across all delegated grades. DWP will again be paying the majority of our employees a 1% increase in 2014.
For SCS in DWP the pay freeze was in place for three years from 2010 to 2012. In 2013 DWP paid around 22% of its SCS cadre increases within an overall 1% cap and with a Cabinet Office limit on individual awards of 9%. The majority of our SCS will not have received a pay award between 2010 and 2013.
Figures for the 2014 SCS and delegated pay awards will not be available until they have been processed at the end of this month.
Below the line comments
1. Because of the numbers involved we are unable to provide information tracking every individual’s pay rise over the period within time and cost perimeters.
2. DWP currently employs 92,510 people and we are not able to provide details for each of these individuals. However, as DWP has applied a simple pay award over each of the years required I am able to summarise our position.
3. The PQ asks for information on pay rises exclusive of changes in grade (most usually promotion). By providing information on pay awards, we will be excluding a small number of pay rises which are due to other factors such as a move to a location which attracts a higher salary (DWP has 4 locational pay zones). It also excludes salary increases as a result of a change in contractual hours.
4. The 2014 pay award will be paid in July salaries. We will not have details of final figures until this has been processed.
5. A small number of individuals are not eligible to receive the pay award e.g. because they are undergoing formal poor performance action in a particular year or are on a salary above the appropriate pay scale maximum.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many mobile telephones, BlackBerrys and laptops were lost by his Department in (a) 2013 and (b) 2014 to date.
Answered by Mike Penning
The information that is available is provided in the following table, which includes details of items that were reported as lost or stolen:
Year | Mobile telephones | Blackberry devices | Laptop computers |
2013 | 17 | 12 | 25 |
2014* | 5 | 13 | 16 |
*to 30 June 2014
The Department takes its statutory responsibilities to protect data and assets extremely seriously; however the above figures need to be viewed in the context of the number of users given that as at 31 March 2014, the Department employed over 88,000 staff.
The Department requires all portable devices to be encrypted, so as to protect the data contained on that media.
Where items have been stolen, necessary investigations are conducted, involving the police as appropriate.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what his Department has spent on developing the Sorting Out Separation web app; how many people are actively using that app; what the cost is per user of the app; what assessment he has made of the value for money of the app; and what steps he plans to take to ensure that future online development in this area represents good value for money.
Answered by Steve Webb
The costs of the Sorting out Separation web app are £417,500 to date. This includes initial build, maintenance and development, hosting, videos and promotion.
Contracts and services for Sorting out Separation have been procured using the online ‘Contracts Finder' and CloudStore (‘G Cloud' framework). Both of these are flexible, low-cost methods of commissioning, which has enabled the Department to maintain a strong focus on value for money from initial development to live running.
As of 31 May 2014 there were 180,000 visitors to Sorting out Separation, which equates to an approximate cost per user of £2.30. We have commissioned work on search engine optimisation to maximise awareness and usage and we anticipate that this will sharply reduce the cost per user in due course.