Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing part of the cost of living payment to people on means tested benefits in winter 2022.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
No such assessment has been made. We will be bringing forward legislation for the 23/24 Cost of Living Payments in due course.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the cost of living payments for disabled people who are not on means tested benefits and who have high energy usage.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The Government is providing extensive support to disabled people and those with a health condition to help them live independent lives. In 2022/23 we will spend around £66bn on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions in Great Britain.
The Government understands the pressures people are facing with the cost of living, including disabled people, and has taken further, decisive action to support people with their energy bills. The Energy Price Guarantee is supporting millions of households with rising energy costs in addition to other cost of living support announced earlier this year, which includes:
To ensure ongoing stability and certainty for households, in the Autumn Statement we announced further support for next year designed to target the most vulnerable households. This cost of living support is worth £26 billion in 2023-24, in addition to uprating benefits for working age households and disabled people as well as the basic and new State Pensions by 10.1%. In order to increase the number of households who can benefit from these uprating decisions, the benefit cap will also be increased by 10.1%. Alongside further Cost of Living Payments for the most vulnerable, including for disabled people, the amended Energy Price Guarantee will save the average UK household £500 in 2023-24.
For those who require extra support, the Government is providing an additional £1 billion of funding, including Barnett impact, to enable the extension of the Household Support Fund in England in the next financial year. This is on top of what we have already provided since October 2021, bringing total funding to £2.5 billion. In England, this will be delivered through an extension to the Household Support Fund backed by £842 million, running from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024, which local authorities use to help households with the cost of essentials. It will be for the devolved administrations to decide how to allocate their additional Barnett funding.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the Household Support Fund for supporting households in Hornsey and Wood Green constituency.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Since October 2021, the London Borough of Haringey has been allocated over £7m through the Household Support Fund. As announced at Autumn Statement, the Household Support Fund will be extended until 31 March 2024. Haringey’s share of this further funding will be announced in due course.
Local Authorities have the ties and local knowledge to best determine how support through the Household Support Fund should be provided to their communities, and they have the discretion to design their own local schemes, within the parameters of the grant determination and guidance for the fund.
The Household Support Fund forms part of the £37 billion of support government is providing with the cost of living during 2022/23 and the extension forms part of £26bn of support for 2023/24.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department has taken recent steps to improve the detection of Universal Credit overpayments.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The Government is investing £1.4billion of funding over the next three years in order to combat fraud and error, which includes a further £613 million to facilitate a number of new initiatives, which collectively will stop an estimated £2.0 billion of loss in fraud and error over the next three years.
Our Fraud Plan, Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System, published on 19 May 2022, sets out our approach and explains how the additional investment is allowing us to recruit 1,400 more staff into our counter-fraud teams; establish a new 2,000-strong team dedicated to reviewing 2 million existing Universal Credit claims and develop enhanced data analytics as a means of preventing and detecting fraud and error.
More information on our Fraud Plan, can be found here:
Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
This builds on the existing work DWP has done to address overpayments, with savings from the correction and prevention of fraud and error totalling £2 billion last year.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of making retrospective payments for childcare costs to families claiming Universal Credit in the context of the cost-of-living crisis.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
Childcare is essential in enabling parents to enter employment and progress in work.
Working families on Universal Credit can claim up to 85% of their monthly childcare costs, increased from 70% in legacy benefits, regardless of the hours worked. This equates to a maximum support of £646.35 per month for one child and £1,108.04 per month for two or more children.
Caimants who need help with upfront childcare costs to enter employment or significantly increase their working hours can apply for help from the Flexible Support Fund (FSF). This is a discretionary non-repayable payment that will pay their initial childcare costs directly to the provider up to the first salary received, up to the prescribed limits, for those eligible claimants.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to answer of 8 July 2022 to Question 26876 on Cost of Living Payments: Housing Benefit, what assessment he has been made of (a) how many people receiving housing benefit only are not receiving the £650 cost of living payment and (b) the sufficiency of the Household Support Fund to reach all those requiring additional support.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
(A) How many people receiving HB only are not receiving the £650 Cost Of Living payment
Approximately 100 thousand working-age HB claimants were not in receipt of a qualifying benefit or Tax Credit and so would not receive a cost of living payment of £650 paid in two lump sums of £326 and £324.
There are a further 370 thousand pensioner HB claimants who were also not in receipt of any qualifying benefit but will receive the £300 Cost of Living payment paid through an increase to the Winter Fuel Payment.
(B) What assessment has been made of the sufficiency of the Household Support Fund to reach all those requiring additional support.
£842m has already been allocated to Local Authorities in England through the Household Support Fund to support those in need for the period October 2021- September 2022. Almost 9 million awards were given to those in need between October 2021 and March 2022 alone. A further £421m is being provided to extend the Household Support Fund from October 2022 to March 2023, taking the total funding for this support to over £1.2bn.
Local Authorities have the ties and local knowledge to best determine how this support should be provided to their local communities, and they have the discretion to design their own local schemes to best meet local need, within the parameters of the grant determination and guidance for the fund.
The Household Support Fund is just one part of a wider package of government support for the cost of living now totalling over £37bn this year.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 20 June 2022 to Question 18980 on Pensions: Inflation, what her Department's timetable is for paying benefits in line with Consumer Prices Index inflation.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is required by law to undertake an annual review of State pensions and benefits. The outcome of that review will be announced later this year, and the new rates will enter into force from 10 April 2023.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the answer of 27 June 2022 to Question 21271 on Long Covid, what progress her Department has made on investigating whether COVID can be classified as an occupational disease.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
The Industrial Injuries Advisory Council (“IIAC”) advises Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on matters related to occupational diseases which may qualify for Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit. IIAC has reviewed the evidence relating to the long-term consequences of COVID-19 infections and hopes to publish a report in the next few months focusing on those post-COVID complications arising from both COVID directly and/or treatment and for which there is sufficient evidence of loss of faculty and potential long-term disability.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if her Department will make it its policy to collect data on what sectors Universal Credit claimants work in, including the number of claimants who are (a) gainfully self-employed and (2) in the start-up period.
Answered by Julie Marson
The Department does not routinely collect data on the sectors in which Universal Credit claimants work, including self-employed work. However, we are currently exploring what additional information we could collect to help Work Coaches support claimants in their search for work.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce the processing times for Personal Independence Payment applications.
Answered by Chloe Smith
While there is no target for clearance times, we are committed to ensuring people can access financial support through Personal Independence Payment (PIP) in a timely manner, taking into account the need to review all available evidence. Reducing customer journey times for PIP claimants is a priority for the Department and we are working constantly to make improvements to our service, including using a blend of phone, video and face-to-face assessments, increasing case manager and assessment provider health professional resource and prioritising new claims, whilst safeguarding the continuity of existing awards to ensure they do not go out of payment.
We are seeing an improvement in clearance times and the latest statistics show that the end-to-end journey has steadily reduced from 26 weeks in August 2021 to 20 weeks at the end of April.