Asked by: David Ward (Liberal Democrat - Bradford East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what his Department's policy is on sanctioning claimants who miss appointments because of probationary commitments.
Answered by Esther McVey
Claimants are only asked to meet reasonable requirements in order to move off benefits and into work. Where claimants have good reason to miss an appointment, such as probationary commitments, then a sanction will not apply.
Asked by: David Ward (Liberal Democrat - Bradford East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to provide an appropriate level of support to people with mental health problems on employment and support allowance participating in the Work Programme.
Answered by Esther McVey
Work Programme providers have the flexibility to design an innovative and personalised approach to help people into work. Many providers offer mental health and well-being support, either in house or through specialist sub-contractors.
In 2013 the Department set up an independently chaired group to share best practice amongst our providers, sub-contractors and representatives from the voluntary sector and national charities. The Best Practice Report was published last month and includes a focus on supporting the harder to help, including those with mental health issues. The Department has accepted the vast majority of recommendations within the report and has begun to implement them.
Asked by: David Ward (Liberal Democrat - Bradford East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce child poverty in Bradford.
Answered by Esther McVey
The Government is committed to our goal of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020.
The 2014-17 Child Poverty Strategy outlines our plans to tackle the root causes of poverty, including worklessness, low earnings and educational failure. This approach reflects the reality of child poverty in the UK today and is the only way to achieve lasting change to protect the poorest in society.
Under this Government, 300,000 fewer children are in relative income poverty, around 390,000 fewer children are growing up in workless families, the attainment gap for deprived pupils has narrowed, and we have recently seen the largest annual fall in unemployment on record.[1]
But central Government cannot, by itself, end child poverty. Where people live matters. This Government has taken action to give local areas more freedom to do what people want and need locally including by providing local data that helps users identify specific local challenges. Local Authorities are required to have their own local child poverty strategies.
Further information is outlined in the Child Poverty Strategy. Local data is also published in the child poverty basket of indicators.
Child Poverty Strategy: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-poverty-strategy-2014-to-2017
Child Poverty basket of indicators: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-poverty-basket-of-local-indicators
[1] Based on Labour Market Statistics published in October 2014. In June-August 2014, there were 538,000 fewer unemployed people compared to a year earlier.
Asked by: David Ward (Liberal Democrat - Bradford East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent progress he has made on rectifying benefit sanctions found to have been wrongly applied.
Answered by Esther McVey
We get the vast majority of decisions right. All decisions are made by independent decision makers based on evidence provided at the time. A sanction will never be imposed if a claimant provides good reason and once sanctioned a claimant has rights to reconsideration and appeal. Hardship payments are also available and vulnerable claimants, including anyone with responsibility for a child, can receive payments immediately.
Asked by: David Ward (Liberal Democrat - Bradford East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many cases in Bradford are awaiting mandatory reconsideration of employment and support allowance decisions.
Answered by Esther McVey
The information requested is not available.
Asked by: David Ward (Liberal Democrat - Bradford East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what additional resources his Department is making available to reduce the time taken to process requests for mandatory reconsideration of employment and support allowance decisions in West Yorkshire.
Answered by Esther McVey
We have targeted the resource we use nationally so that requests are processed as quickly as possible to minimise any undue delays, without compromising good quality decision-making.
In addition we are currently reviewing the customer journey to understand where the pinch points are in the decision making process in order to reduce the end to end journey time.
Asked by: David Ward (Liberal Democrat - Bradford East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many cases in Bradford are (a) pending and (b) being processed through his Department's mandatory reconsideration mechanism.
Answered by Esther McVey
The information requested is not available.
Asked by: David Ward (Liberal Democrat - Bradford East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what his Department's key performance indicators are for decisions that require mandatory reconsideration.
Answered by Esther McVey
There is no statutory time limit. We deliberately do not have one because each case will be considered on its merits.