Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the support available to people who have been made redundant as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The Rapid Response Service (RRS) is all about working in partnerships to address the effects of job losses on individuals and on the local community. Our aim is to work with employers to deliver flexible, timely, and appropriate support for them and their employees and help individuals secure a job or move into self-employment quickly and ideally without the need to claim welfare benefits.
RRS is available to private and public employers. Third sector employers are also eligible where the job losses affect paid workers. RRS support can start when people are under threat of redundancy or during the period of notice.
Where individuals have not found alternative work before they lose their job, RRS support can continue for a further 13 weeks whether they make a claim for benefits or not.
This is in addition to the ongoing support provided by DWP for claimants moving them forward in their journey closer to/back into employment.
We continually review this support to ensure it meets the needs of those people who access this type of support.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many jobs have been made available through the Kickstart Scheme in (a) the London Borough of Bexley, (b) Greater London and (c) England as at 17 May 2021.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Delivering the Kickstart Scheme at pace has led to a limited data set which makes it harder to accurately present a snapshot of a smaller geographical area.
We are continuing to develop our data, which may help in sharing local authority level information in due course.
We are able to provide, however, that in the ONS defined region of London, as of 6 May 2021 around 22,740 jobs had been made available for young people to apply for and around 4,500 jobs started by young people on the Kickstart Scheme.
Although care is taken when processing and analysing Kickstart applications, referrals and starts, the data collected might be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system which has been developed quickly. The management information presented here has not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics, but is provided in the interests of transparency. Work is ongoing to improve the quality of information available for the programme.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the level of youth unemployment in (a) the Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency, (b) Bexley Borough and (c) Greater London.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The Department regularly publishes statistics on the Alternative Claimant Count, and these are available by local authority and constituency, this includes information defined by different age groups and is available on StatXplore, please see link below:
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: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
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 effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the level of unemployment in (a) London, (b) Bexley Borough and (c) Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The latest ONS headline figures for unemployment published in July for the quarter ending May 2020, remain at 3.9%.
DWP publishes, via its Stat Xplore website, official statistics on the number of people claiming unemployment-related benefits by parliamentary constituency and local authority area (the ‘Alternative Claimant Count’).
Estimates of the number of people who are unemployed are compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) using the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Annual Population Survey (APS).
The LFS provides national and regional unemployment estimates whilst the APS, which is a modified version of the LFS, allows sub-regional analysis.
Estimates are based on a sample of cases and therefore subject to sampling uncertainty. Unemployment estimates at sub-regional geographies such as local authorities and parliamentary constituencies are especially uncertain.
The latest figures from the LFS estimate that in the quarter March-May 20 there were 256,000 people unemployed in London. This equates to an unemployment rate for London of 5.1% - an increase of 0.6 %pts on the December-February 20 quarter.
All estimates of unemployment used in this answer are publicly available on the NOMIS website (https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/). All estimates of Alternative Claimant Count used in this answer are publicly available on the StatXplore website (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/alternative-claimant-count-statistics-january-2013-to-may-2020).
ONS considers its estimate of unemployment in Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency to be statistically unreliable as the sample size is based on fewer than 10 people.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
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 ensure applications for universal credit are dealt with in a timely manner throughout the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Will Quince
In response to unprecedented numbers of new claims, my Department has ensured that getting benefit payments made on time is its priority. In this period we expect over 90% of UC new claimants to be paid in full and on time.
The Department has mobilised robust business continuity plans to ensure we can do just that. We have redeployed a significant number of DWP staff—about 8,000 so far—and staff from other Government Departments, about 500 so far, to process these claims, as well support from the private sector.
We have also introduced new processes to ease pressure on waiting times for identity verification over the phone and other processes. People making new claims for Universal Credit no longer need to call the Department as part of the process. Once they have completed their online application we will call them if we need to check any of the information they have given us.
The Universal Credit system is facing extraordinary pressures exerted by the unprecedented volume of new claims, but it is standing up to this challenge. The agility of the system means that capacity can be built rapidly and this has enabled it to cope in the face of demand which would have overwhelmed the complex legacy benefit regime.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of working people in receipt of top-up benefits are resident in (a) Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency, (b) Bexley Borough, and (c) London.
Answered by Lord Sharma
The numbers of in work families receiving tax credits are in table 1.1 of the Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: finalised annual awards - 2016 to 2017 published by HMRC which can be accessed at:
Geographical breakdowns including constituency level figures are available at:
Universal Credit and Housing Benefit statistics for Great Britain are regularly published and the latest statistics for October 2018 and August 2018 respectively can be accessed at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk
Guidance for users is available at:
https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
The information available for the number of employed individuals that are in receipt of Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance across geographical areas can be found in the table in the document attached.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many claims have been made for universal credit hardship payments.
Answered by Lord Sharma
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to Question 147952 on 4 June.