Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of Child Maintenance Service income challenges by paying parents were as a result of private pension payments not being deducted from income calculations.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Child Maintenance Service complaints were made by paying parents in relation to income data not being used to calculate payments; and what proportion of those complaints were upheld in the last three years.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
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 time taken for benefit claimants to receive decision letters containing a four week deadline for appeal by post; and what assessment she has made of the effect of postal delays on the time available for claimants to make an appeal.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 1 May 2018 to Questions 137165 and 137166 on Children: Maintenance, if he will publish the figures for (a) Dunfermline and West Fife, (b) Glenrothes and (c) North East Fife constituency.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The number of paying parents with unpaid maintenance, and the corresponding amount of money outstanding of such unpaid maintenance as of June 2018 for the constituencies of Dunfermline and West Fife, Glenrothes, and North East Fife are outlined in the table below.
| Number of paying parents with unpaid maintenance | Amount of unpaid maintenance (£) |
Dunfermline and West Fife | 210 | 290,000 |
Glenrothes | 260 | 410,000 |
North East Fife | 130 | 160,000 |
Paying parents are rounded to the nearest 10, unpaid maintenance is rounded to the nearest £10,000.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many complaints relating to women affected by measures taken to equalise the state pension age the office of the Independent Case Examiner is currently dealing with; and how many such cases that office has processed in (a) the last 12 months and (b) the last 24 months.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
At the end of August 2018, the Independent Case Examiner’s Office had 3,192 live complaints from women affected by measures taken to equalise the state pension age, at various stages of its process.
We have interpreted the reference to ‘processed’ as meaning closed or completed. The ICE Office received the first of this group of complaints in October 2016 and one investigation report was issued, and in the period September 2017 to August 2018 150 investigation reports were issued.
Year | Completed or Closed |
2016-17 | 1 |
2017-18 | 150 |
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of complaints relating to women affected by measures taken to equalise the state pension age submitted to the Independent Case Examiner have (a) progressed to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman; and how many of those cases so progressed have concluded in favour of the complainant.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department for Work and Pensions does not have this data.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many staff have been assigned to the office of the Independent Case Examiner to deal with complaints raised by women affected by measures taken to equalise the state pension age.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Independent Case Examiner’s Office has assigned three Investigation Case Managers to examine this group of complaints.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many complaints submitted to the Independent Case Examiner relating to women affected by measures taken to equalise the state pension age have been upheld; and what proportion of the total number of complaints received by that office that number represents.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
At the end of August 2018, the Independent Case Examiner’s Office had accepted 2,683 complaints from women affected by measures taken to equalise state pension age and concluded 151 investigations into this group of complaints, none of which were upheld on the main element of complaint.
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many paying parents are in maintenance arrears through the Child Maintenance Service in Dunfermline and West Fife constituency; and what the value of those such arrears is.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Department does hold data on the number of non-resident parents who are in maintenance arrears through the Child Maintenance Service and the amount of money which is outstanding in such cases. However this information is not routinely collated at constituency level and could only be provided at a disproportionate cost.
You may be interested in the Child Maintenance Service Statistics: Regional Tables which are published quarterly. These tables contain the number of parents using the service and measures of compliance for the Collect and Pay service at local authority level.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-aug-2013-to-mar-2018-experimental
Asked by: Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department has had discussions with WASPI campaign groups on the time taken for complaints raised by women affected by measures taken to equalise the state pension age to be dealt with by her Department; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Under successive governments, individual departments have set up complaints procedures.
The Department for Work and Pensions has a two tier complaints process which considers formal complaints about our service. As outlined on GOV.UK, DWP complaints processes encourages customers in the first instance to raise their issues with the office they are dealing with, as a business as usual contact, so we put things right.
If the customer remains unhappy with the response, they can escalate their concerns, which will be dealt with by the Complaints Resolution Team as part of the formal DWP complaints process. The complaint is independently investigated. Where cases cannot be resolved to the customer’s satisfaction, the customer can escalate their complaint to the Director General as part of the tier two complaint process.
Escalated complaints represent the final business review and response to the complaint.
Once a complainant has exhausted the DWP complaint process they are signposted to the Independent Case Examiner’s (ICE) Office if they are dissatisfied with the final response to their complaint.
Complaints received from women born in the 1950s and affected by changes in State Pension age are handled in line with the overall Departmental complaints process published on GOV.UK.
The role of the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) is to consider case-specific complaints of maladministration (service failure). The vast majority of the complaints that are referred to ICE are complex and require the circumstances of each case to be considered on its merits. Prior to the WASPI campaign the ICE Office routinely accepted in the region of 1,100 and 1,200 complaints for examination each year. At the end of February 2018, the Office had accepted 1,907 WASPI complaints alone.
In January 2017, the ICE Office took the decision to bring a lead case into investigation in order to familiarise itself with the issues underpinning the campaign. This investigation concluded in June 2017 – the ICE did not uphold the complaint. Whilst the Office has had no additional resource to deal with the WASPI campaign complaints, a dedicated team of investigation case managers was established (from within existing resources) in October 2017 to investigate this group of complaints. The ICE Office aim to complete investigation within 20 weeks of starting work on a case, the WASPI related ICE reports that had been concluded to date have been completed within an average of 9.75 weeks. To date, the ICE had not upheld any case specific complaints that DWP failed to provide adequate and timely information relating to the increase in their State Pension age. All final ICE reports explain how the complainant can escalate their complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office.
There are no plans to dedicate additional resources to investigating this group of complaints, as to do so would disadvantage other groups of complainants whose cases are awaiting investigation.
The Parliamentary Health and Service Ombudsman make final decisions on complaints that have not been resolved by UK Government Departments. This was set up in 1967 under the then Labour Government.