Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda and Ogmore)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of reducing the Universal Credit taper rate.
Answered by Jo Churchill
In November 2021, The Government reduced the taper rate from 63% to 55%. There are no current plans to further reduce the taper, however this will be kept under review.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda and Ogmore)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will publish a further equalities impact assessment for the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill relating to third party data gathering.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The department has assessed the impact of the third-party data measure in the regulatory impact assessment scrutinised and green-rated by the Regulatory Policy Committee. This was published on the 27th November 2023 as part of the supporting documentation for the Data Protection and Information Bill and is available here: Data Protection and Digital Information Bill: supporting documents - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
The department has fulfilled all the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) as set out in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 and in line with our statutory duty keeps the impact of this measure on groups with protected characteristics under continuous review.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda and Ogmore)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many subject access requests her Department has (a) received and (b) responded to within the statutory limit in the last five years.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Minister (Equalities)
In replying to the Parliamentary Question, I have taken the “last five years” to refer to the period 1/9/2017 to 30/9/2022 inclusive.
Prior to GDPR coming into force on 25/5/2018, Subject Access Requests (SARs) were actioned by Local Data Disclosure Officers at District level.
Therefore, there is no DWP MI available regarding the receipt or clearance of SARs prior to this date.
From 25/5/2018, the SAR process in DWP was centralised. However, the administration of SARs did not start to transition to the eCase software until July 2018, and further SARs in respect of Compensation Recovery Unit only were managed by a separate team at that time. Therefore, full and/or accurate MI is not available for this period, nor is the information still available to retrospectively create it due the information retention period.
From December 2018, DWP commenced monthly reporting of SAR performance to the ICO. Full and accurate MI is available from this date. Therefore, the following information relates to SARs received or completed from 1/12/2018 to 30/09/2022 inclusive.
Year | From | To | SARs Received | SARs | SARs | SAR's Closed NRN |
2018 | 01/12/2018 | 31/12/2018 | 3404 | 2635 | 1959 | 379 |
2019 | 01/01/2019 | 31/12/2019 | 55438 | 49266 | 39102 | 5057 |
2020 | 01/01/2020 | 31/12/2020 | 38849 | 33657 | 24197 | 5971 |
2021 | 01/01/2021 | 31/12/2021 | 34884 | 26937 | 23611 | 9866 |
2022 | 01/01/2022 | 30/09/2022 | 25031 | 18409 | 16775 | 4999 |
Not all Subject Access Requests received will progress to be processed & records released. Some requests require further clarification to verify the identity of the requester. Where this is not provided the SAR is not validated and will be Closed NRN (No Response Necessary). Also, other requests may later be identified as not being a SAR, but for other areas of DWP. These will also be Closed NRN. I have therefore included the volume of SARS that were Closed NRN over the same period.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda and Ogmore)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will reinstate the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit in the context of 9 per cent inflation and the rising cost of living.
Answered by David Rutley
There are no plans to reinstate the temporary increase to Universal Credit.
The government understands the pressures people are facing with the cost of living and these are global challenges, but the government has taken action to support and help families with a package worth over £22 billion in 2022-23.These steps help ensure that on average a person in work is £6000 better off in work than on benefits. And we stand ready to do more as the situation evolves.