Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what steps he has taken to mitigate the financial impact of Universal Credit deductions on (a) families with children and (b) other recipients.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The amount that can be deducted is capped and we have lowered the standard cap on deductions from Universal Credit twice over recent years, firstly from 40% to 30% in October 2019 and then to 25% in April 2021.
DWP takes every care to recover benefit debt without causing undue financial hardship.
Deductions are made under legislation and cover a broad range of contingencies, like the recovery of fines to prevent incarceration, the payment of rent arrears to prevent homelessness, child maintenance liabilities to their children, and provision for one-off items of expenditure through advances and the repayment of debts.
DWP remains committed to working with anyone who is struggling with their deductions and encourages customers to contact DWP to discuss any concerns.
The department has a well-established process for working with individuals to support them to manage repayment of debt. Our agents will always look to negotiate affordable and sustainable repayment plans. For overpayment deductions specifically, where a person feels they cannot afford the proposed rate of deduction for an overpayment recovery, they are encouraged to contact the department’s Debt Management to discuss a temporary reduction in their rate of repayment or cessation of the deduction.
There is no minimum amount that a customer has to pay, and we have recently extended the time period for any reduced payment to remain in place.
Customers who do contact Debt Management are routinely referred to the Money Advisor Network, who work in partnership with DWP, to offer free independent and impartial money and debt advice. We also remain committed to His Majesty’s Treasury’s Breathing Space policy, which provides those with problem debt the right to legal protections from creditor action for a period of 60 days to enable them to receive debt advice and enter into an appropriate debt solution.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 5 of the British Medical Journal article entitled Impact of Universal Credit in North East England, published in 2019, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of that article's findings on the impact of Universal Credit deductions on (a) incidences of self-harm, (b) suicidal ideation, (c) alcohol and substance-use, (d) debt and (e) use of foodbanks in the North East of England.
Answered by Guy Opperman
No assessment has been made.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to prevent (a) payment delays and (b) incorrect fluctuations in monthly payments for Universal Credit claimants in the North East.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Department has a dedicated performance team in Universal Credit working with our teams nationally to continually level up caseloads/workloads to ensure timely and accurate payments to customers.
Our current payment performance shows we paid 92.1% of all new claimants to Universal Credit accurately and on time. In addition, we paid 97.1% of all other customers their Universal Credit entitlement accurately and on time.
Universal Credit payment timeliness statistics for new claims are published in Table 6 in the Households on Universal Credit section on Stat-Xplore. These figures can be filtered by different geographies and can be found at: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what data his Department holds on the average monthly deduction taken from households with children in receipt of Universal Credit by (a) region (b) Parliamentary constituency in the North East.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The requested information is provided in the separate spreadsheet, subject to the caveats below:
Table 1 shows the requested analysis of Universal Credit households with children with a payment due in May 2023 by region.
Table 2 shows the requested analysis of Universal Credit households with children with a payment due in May 2023 in parliamentary constituencies in the North East.
Notes:
1. For low level geography: volumes have been rounded to the nearest 100, total amounts have been rounded to the nearest £1,000 and average amounts have been rounded to the nearest £1. For totals at GB level: volumes have been rounded to the nearest 100,000, total amounts have been rounded to the nearest £1,000,000 and average amount has been rounded to the nearest £1.
2. The sum of individual low level geographies may not sum to the total figure due to rounding.
3. Deductions include advance repayments, third party deductions and all other deductions, but exclude sanctions and fraud penalties which are reductions of benefit rather than deductions.
4. Children are defined here as being people who are declared as living in the same household as the UC claimant(s) and who are under the age of 20. The number of children may not be equal to the number of dependent children in the household who are eligible for child element for various reasons. This includes children over the age of 16 in non-advanced full-time education, looked-after children and, other young people living in multigenerational households whose parents are not the claimant. Those affected by the policy to provide support for a maximum of two children may also have a larger number of children compared to the number of children entitled to the child element in their household.
5. Figures are provisional and are subject to retrospective change as later data becomes available.
6. The ‘unknown' parliamentary constituency equates to 0.2% of all households and relates to households for which a constituency could not be determined due to incomplete postcode information.
7. Data for May 2023 has been provided in line with the latest available UC Household Statistics.
8. Claim numbers and number of children on UC will not match official statistics caseloads due to methodological differences.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department have made of trends in the distribution of food parcels in (a) Newcastle upon Tyne Central (b) the North East and (c) the UK.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Foodbanks are independent, charitable organisations and HM Government does not have any role in their operation. As such, data on trends in the distribution of food parcels in Newcastle upon Tyne Central, the North East, and the UK is not available.
This government is committed to understanding and addressing poverty which is why we have published official estimates of foodbank use for the first time in March 2023.
National statistics on food bank use for 2021/22 are available here. We aim to publish statistics for 2022/23 in March 2024.
In 2021/22, 3% of individuals, or 2.1m people, were living in households where a food bank has been used in the 12 months prior to the interview.
In 2021/22, 4% of households in the North East used a food bank in the 12 months prior to the interview.
Statistics are not available at the constituency level.
This Government is committed to a sustainable long-term approach to tackling poverty and supporting people on lower incomes and we will spend around £276bn through the welfare system in 2023/24 including around £124bn on people of working age and children and around £152 billion on pensioners. Of this, around £77 billion will be spent on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions. (GB, includes non-DWP spend, prices in 23-24 terms).
Over 8 million UK households on eligible means tested benefits will receive additional Cost of Living Payments totalling up to £900. More than eight million pensioner households across the UK will receive an additional £300 Cost of Living Payment during winter 2023-24 and over 6 million people across the UK on eligible ’extra-costs’ disability benefits will receive a further £150 Disability Cost of Living Payment during summer 2023-24, to help with the additional costs they face.
For those who require extra support, the Government is providing an additional £1 billion of funding, including Barnett impact, to enable a year-long extension of the Household Support Fund in England this financial year. This is on top of what we have already provided since October 2021, bringing total funding to £2.5 billion. It will be for the devolved administrations to decide how to allocate their additional Barnett funding. Newcastle upon Tyne has been allocated £5,796,808 for the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 to support those most in need with the cost of essentials, including those who may not be eligible for other Government support.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people were in receipt of Carer's Allowance and Personal Independence Payment at the same time in Newcastle upon Tyne Central constituency in each of the last five years.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The number of claimants who received Carer's Allowance and Personal Independence Payment at the end of each quarter, from February 2013 to November 2022, by Westminster parliamentary constituency, is published in the Benefit Combinations datasets on Stat-Xplore.
Figures from February 2013 to May 2021 are recorded in one dataset, with figures in England and Wales provided separately from Scotland from August 2021 onwards. 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: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
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 impact of the change to the national insurance credit system from a manual to automated system on the accuracy of NI figures distributed to recipients.
Answered by Guy Opperman
HMRC are responsible for the National Insurance Recording System.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether NEST employed external advisers and consultants regarding the procurement contract between the National Employment Savings Trust and Atos which was cancelled.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
As a public corporation Nest Corporation is generally independent of government in its day-to-day commercial decisions. As the Trustee of the pension scheme, Nest Corporation has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of its pension scheme members. To fulfil this duty Nest Corporation has sole responsibility for the recruitment, retention of its staff, including external advisers and consultants to provide advice.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the cost to the public purse was of (a) all activities, (b) contract negotiation, (c) staffing costs and (d) general resource expenditure associated with the cancelled procurement contract between the National Employment Savings Trust and Atos since 2019; and what steps his Department is taking to ensure value for money in digital procurement.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Nest Corporation is the Trustee for the scheme and is classified as a public corporation because it receives over 50% of its income from commercial activities. It is accountable to Parliament through the department, which retains a crucial role in oversight, but is generally independent of government in its day-to-day commercial decisions. As part of the department’s oversight function all costs associated with Nest’s decision to terminate the contract with Atos would be subsumed within a core staffing and resources budget with no specific allocation provided. Through activities across market engagement, procurement and contract management, DWP continually seeks to ensure value for money by planning the contractual needs, sourcing the right suppliers to meet those needs and then effectively managing the resulting contracts.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to ensure that training programmes offered by his Department to people seeking work reflect the skills required by local economies.
Answered by Guy Opperman
Jobcentre Plus employer partnership leads work closely with local employers to understand labour market need and with local training providers to ensure provision is available to address skills gaps. This approach is exemplified in our successful Sector-based Work Academy Programme (SWAPs) which combines work experience, job specific training and a guaranteed interview to support claimants into local vacancies. The benefit of this integrated approach is clear, having achieved over 88,000 SWAPs starts this financial year.
Jobcentre Plus leads also engage with national employers to identify regional employment opportunities and will play a key role in the development and implementation of employer representative body led Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs). LSIPs will set out local priorities needed to ensure training is more responsive and aligned with the employer view of the skills most needed to support local economic growth and boost productivity and improve employability and progression for learners. LSIP guidance is available online