Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps she has taken to address the disability employment gap.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
Government set out a ten year change programme, to improve disability employment, in the Command Paper “Improving Lives: the future of work, health and disability” (2017). This describes actions across welfare, workplace and health settings.
Recent steps taken include:
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of disabled people leaving work as a result of a (a) disability and (b) long-term health condition in (i) 2016, (ii) 2017 and (iii) 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The information requested is not available.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she has taken to increase the number of disabled people employed by her Department.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
DWP is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader and is committed to attracting, recruiting and retaining disabled people, and supporting them to achieve their full potential.
To support this commitment and increase the number of disabled colleagues we employ we have implemented a number of actions which include:
encouraging individuals to voluntarily share their personal diversity information so that we have a hold of our workforce representation;
developing our attraction strategy to better promote the diversity of our workforce and our commitment to inclusion and equality of opportunity for all;
a review of our recruitment process and adopting the new Civil Service Success Profile recruitment method, moving towards a more strengths based rather than competency focussed recruitment approach;
continued application of the Guaranteed Interview Scheme to ensure that all disabled candidates who meet the minimum sift requirements are offered an interview, and provision of reasonable adjustment support throughout the whole application process;
introduction of diverse interview panel representation;
Implementation of a Senior Civil Servant new entrant disabled on-flow target of 12% by 2025, as of March 2019 we are achieving 11.3% (please note that these figures are not currently published)
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many organisations have participated in her Department's voluntary reporting framework on disability, mental health and wellbeing in the workplace since November 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The voluntary reporting framework was developed by the Government in partnership with employers and expert partners to support organisations to record and voluntarily report information on disability, mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. There is no requirement for them to notify the Government of this information and no figures on participation are held. The approach recognises that transparency can be an effective leaver in creating a more equal society both for employees within organisations and for external audiences.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many working age people employed in her Department have left work as a result of a (a) disability and (b) long-term health condition in (i) 2016, (ii) 2017 and (iii) 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
When leaving the department, people are asked on a voluntary basis to complete a questionnaire stating the reason we are therefore unable to give complete figures. The table below shows numbers of ill health retirements over the period requested.
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Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking taken to encourage the retention of disabled people working in her Department.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
DWP is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader and is committed to attracting, recruiting and retaining disabled people, and supporting them to achieve their full potential.
To support this commitment and retain our disabled colleagues we have implemented a number of actions which include:
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reasons his Department does not record deaths caused by (a) industrial disease and (b) other occupational hazards after the age of 75.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) estimates of the annual number of deaths linked to past exposures at work include deaths occurring at all ages. However, analyses of national mortality data based on the last occupation of the deceased recorded on death certificates, such as the mesothelioma analyses published by HSE, do not include deaths beyond age 74. This is because it is known that the accuracy of occupational information recorded on death certificates declines for older ages. Therefore, the data on the last occupation of the deceased is only coded for those aged 16 to 74 in England and Wales by the Office for National Statistics.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate his Department has made of the number of deaths caused by mesothelioma in each of the last three years.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The number of mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain occurring in each of the last three years for which data are available is provided in the following table:
Year | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
Number of mesothelioma deaths* | 2547 | 2606 | 2523 |
Figures for 2018 are not yet available due to the length of time taken for some mesothelioma deaths occurring in a given year to be registered.
*All deaths where the death certificate mentioned mesothelioma within the description of the cause of death.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment her Department has made of the effect of regional job centre closures on trends in the level of homelessness in those regions.
Answered by Lord Sharma
When closing or merging a Jobcentre, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) undertake an equality analysis as part of the detailed planning for service reconfiguration. This will include feedback from public consultation in those locations where this applied. Details of jobcentres that have closed and/or merged in the last two years can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/update-on-the-future-of-dwp-jobcentres
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government publishes local authority data on homelessness applications quarterly.
Reference should also be made to the response given on 9 February 2018 in the reply to PQ 126480.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the financial effect on students in receipt of personal independence payments (PIP) caused by her policy that students in receipt of PIP who are studying abroad must return to the UK every 12 weeks in order to not lose their rights to their benefits.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The rules allowing for temporary absence abroad apply to Attendance Allowance, Carer’s Allowance, Disability Living Allowance and Personal Independence Payment and were subject to consultation in 2012 (https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/dla-reform-and-pip-completing-the-detailed-design). Under that consultation we had originally proposed a temporary absence rule of four weeks. However, respondents to the consultation told us that the time period was too short and would negatively impact on certain people such as:
As a consequence of this consultation, and the suggestions received, we amended our proposal so that a period of 13 weeks would be allowed. This period of time was chosen in part to cover term time absences for students and also to allow people a longer period to visit families living abroad where a long journey may be required.