Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on how many occasions DWP staff have failed to call Universal Credit customers or their appointees at the agreed appointment time in each month of the last 12 months.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department for Work and Pensions does not hold the requested information centrally, and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 16 October 2025 to Question 77147 on Personal Independence Payment, if he will make it his policy to collect data on the impact of registration of an appointee on a person's PIP payments to track the number of times benefits are inadvertently (a) missed, (b) delayed and (c) stopped.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
There are no plans to collect this data.
We aim to process applications for appointeeship as soon as possible to avoid delays. It is important that the department conducts checks to ensure that an appointee is both suitable to act and needed by the claimant. Entitlement to PIP would be from the date of claim, meaning the claimant would not lose entitlement because of the appointeeship process.
Payments of benefit are the same whether a claimant has an appointee or not.
Payments would not be inadvertently stopped because someone has an appointee. Payment can be suspended if concerns are raised about the appointee’s suitability to act, or if there are doubts about the claimant’s entitlement.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many PIP claimants had a registered appointee in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The total number of PIP claimants with an appointee in July 2025 was 251,400.
Notes:
- The value provided has been rounded to the nearest 100.
- The value provided only accounts for claimants under DWP policy ownership (England, Wales or abroad).
- The value provided reflects the caseload at the end of July 2025 – the latest available data.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many times has a PIP claimant's payment been (a) missed and (b) delayed following the registration of an appointee on their account in the last 12 months.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We do not hold any data about the impacts of registration of an appointee on a person’s PIP payments.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Access to Work applications were (a) submitted and (b) rejected in (i) part and (ii) full in the 2024-25 financial year; and how many and what proportion of applications that were rejected were taken to reconsideration.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
(a) 157,023 applications were submitted during 2024-25
(b) 88,607 applications were approved during 2024-25 with a further (i)4,227 applications where advice was provided to the claimant. (ii)34,959 applications were not approved with the following reasons:
1,378 reconsideration requests were received during 2024-25, this equates to 1.1% of decisions made had a reconsideration request
Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the (a) longest, (b) shortest and (c) average time taken was from the date an Access to Work application was submitted to the date a decision was made in the 2024-25 financial year.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The longest wait time during April 2024 – March 2025, from the date submitted to the date the decision was made was 393 days
The shortest wait time during April 2024 – March 2025, from the date submitted to the date the decision was made was 1 day
The average wait time during April 2024 – March 2025, from the date submitted to the date the decision was made was 56.9 days
Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.
We are committed to reducing waiting times for Access to Work and are considering the best way to deliver that for customers. We have increased the number of staff processing Access to Work claims and applications from customers who are about to start a job or who are renewing are prioritised.
The Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to get Britain Working’ Green Paper was published on 18 March. Alongside the Access to Work reform proposals introduced in the Green Paper, we are considering further options to reduce the waiting time for customers.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of treating savings in lifetime ISAs in the same way as pension funds when calculating savings limits for means tested benefits.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
There are no plans to change the way savings held in a Lifetime ISA are treated in the assessment of means-tested benefits including Universal Credit. The value of the pension fund that someone and their employer pays into protects that person for retirement, and it is right whilst they remain below state pension credit age, that the value of that fund is disregarded when assessing entitlement to means-tested benefits.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing assistance for costs to unemployed jobseekers for travelling to in-person interviews for temporary jobs on minimum pay.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Our new Get Britain Working plan is designed to reform employment support and create a new jobs and careers service to help people into work. We know that travel costs can be a barrier to work for unemployed customers. Currently the Flexible Support Fund is a discretionary non-recoverable fund, that work coaches can use to remove barriers to work for eligible Universal Credit customers, such as assistance with travel costs.
Furthermore, the Jobcentre Plus Travel Discount Card is available to eligible customers to offer reduced rail fares supporting them into employment. The main aim of this support is to improve customers’ job and earnings progression prospects and can include travel to interviews.