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 support her Department is planning to provide to women affected by the changes to the state pension age.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Government has strengthened the safety net to provide financial support during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is committed to providing financial support for people at every stage of their life, including when they near or reach retirement. The welfare system will continue to provide support to men and women who are unable to work or those who are on a low income but who are not eligible to pensioner benefits because of their age.
We have invested in a significant new programme, the Plan for Jobs, to help people of all ages who may be made redundant find work and acquire the skills they need to return to work. Our Fuller Working Lives strategy and the Business Champion for Older Workers and Employers will continue to encourage businesses to recognise the value and skills of employing older workers. Jobcentre Plus Older Claimant Champions provide additional tailored support to help people return to work. We have never spent more as a country on welfare support than we do now.
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 women over sixty years of age are claiming universal credit.
Answered by Will Quince
The latest available information on the number of people on Universal Credit broken down by gender and by age is published 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: 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 steps her Department is taking to assist women affected by the changes to the state pension age during the covid-19 crisis.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Government has strengthened the safety net to provide financial support during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is committed to providing financial support for people at every stage of their life, including when they near or reach retirement. The welfare system will continue to provide support to men and women who are unable to work or those who are on a low income but who are not eligible to pensioner benefits because of their age.
We have invested in a significant new programme, the Plan for Jobs, to help people of all ages who may be made redundant find work and acquire the skills they need to return to work. Our Fuller Working Lives strategy and the Business Champion for Older Workers and Employers will continue to encourage businesses to recognise the value and skills of employing older workers. Jobcentre Plus Older Claimant Champions provide additional tailored support to help people return to work. We have never spent more as a country on welfare support than we do now.
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, whether crowd funded donations to people affected by flooding as a result of Storm Dennis will be treated as exempted hardship payments in relation to benefits.
Answered by Will Quince
Across the range of income-related benefits, there are provisions to disregard payments received for the express purpose of effecting essential repairs to a home damaged by flooding, to make it habitable again, and intended to be used for that purpose. Monies raised though crowd funding have no impact on contributory benefits.
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 steps she has taken to ensure child maintenance payments are made on time by employers.
Answered by Will Quince
A welcome pack is issued to each new employer which is followed up with a telephone call to a specific person in payroll to check they understand the Deductions from Earnings Order (DEO) process and the employers obligation, to deduct payments on time from employee salary. Each month thereafter, a target schedule is sent to the employer’s payroll department.
For existing employers a target schedule is also sent and a phone call will have taken place when we initially requested deductions to be taken.
If employers don’t make the payment to CMS on time we will call that employer 5 working days after the missed payment to investigate late payment and re-iterate their obligations to CMS.
Where employers repeatedly fail to send payments, we will work with them to understand what we need to do in order to reach compliance. At this point we also work alongside our Financial Investigations Unit, where we might consider a face to face visit to the employer is appropriate. This will take place with trained investigators, who will also remind employers of their legal obligation to deduct and pass on child maintenance payments.
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 support is provided to parents who do not receive child maintenance payments on time.
Answered by Will Quince
It is a key principle that unpaid child maintenance should be paid immediately. Where a non-resident parent fails to pay on time or in full, we aim to take immediate action to recover the unpaid maintenance and re-establish compliance.
Where compliance is not achieved and the non-resident parent is employed we will attempt to deduct their maintenance (and/or any arrears) direct from their earnings via a deduction from earnings order. Employers are obliged by law to take this action for us.
We have a range of other strong enforcement powers, including deducting child maintenance directly from bank accounts, using Enforcement Agents to take control of goods, forcing the sale of property, disqualification from driving or commitment to prison as well as restrictions on applying for and holding a passport.
As part of our new Compliance and Arrears Strategy we have further strengthened our collection and enforcement powers to enable us to deduct child maintenance from a wider range of bank accounts and enable us to apply to the court for an order to disqualify a parent with child maintenance arrears from holding or obtaining a UK passport.