Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of his Department's employees were paid (a) at the national minimum wage and (b) above the national minimum wage but below the voluntary living wage in each of the last five years.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
DWP has paid its employees above the National Minimum Wage throughout the last five years.
DWP has paid its employees above the voluntary living wage with the following exceptions:
- A short period from October 2013 to June 2014, following the October 2013 uprating of the voluntary living wage rate. During that time 229 (less than 0.3%) DWP employees earned 1p per hour below the figure.
- From November 2015 when the voluntary living wage rate was increased by 5.1%. Currently 1,145 (1.4%) employees earn between 4-21p less per hour than the uprated voluntary living wage figure.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much and what proportion of his Department's budget for employment support has been allocated to the Work and Health Programme for each of the next four years.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
In the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor announced a new Work and Health Programme to provide specialist support for claimants with health conditions or disabilities and those unemployed for over 2 years after current Work Programme and Work Choice contracts end.
The Department is currently undertaking its normal prioritisation process to determine how funding secured at the Spending Review is allocated on an annual basis.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 7 of the Government's response to the Fifth Report from the Work and Pensions Committee, on Benefit Sanctions: Beyond the Oakley Review, HC 557, when the Government plans to publish the results of its evaluation of the pilot programme of in-work sanctions.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
Following a successful Proof of Concept stage, national roll-out of the Universal Credit In-Work Progression Randomised Control Trial commenced from 7 December 2015. Recruitment into the trial will continue until the target sample of 15,000 in-work participants is achieved. We currently expect to reach this number by Autumn 2016, after which time the trial will continue to run for a period of 12 months. An evaluation report will follow in 2018.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to paragraph 2.50 of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015, to which claimants the announcement of an extension of job search conditionality relates.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
By 2020 Universal Credit (UC) will extend support to over a million more claimants than under Jobseeker’s Allowance. The majority of people in this group are not in work and currently have no employment support available. A small proportion of the group may be earning very small amounts - less than the Administrative Earnings Threshold - and will benefit from the out of work support.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to his Department's report, Universal Credit Extended Gateway Evaluation, published on 6 December 2015, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the report's finding on page 13, that 37 per cent of people claiming universal credit felt that their claimant commitment took account of their personal circumstances.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
The report shows that 85% of people claiming Universal Credit thought the Claimant Commitment took into account all or some of their personal circumstances. Of that, 37% thought that all of the requirements in their Claimant Commitment took into account their personal circumstances and an additional 48% felt that some of the requirements of their claimant commitment took their personal circumstances into account.
Universal Credit is having a positive impact on claimants’ movements into work. Other recently published research, ‘Estimating the Early Labour Market Impacts of Universal Credit’, demonstrates that UC has a substantial impact on the chances of people moving into work after they make a new claim. UC claimants were 8 percentage points more likely to get a job within 270 days of claiming than equivalent new claims to JSA made at the same time in similar areas by similar individuals.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he plans to reform the (a) work allowances and (b) taper rate within universal credit during the current Parliament.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
There are no plans to amend the work allowances and taper rates beyond those set out by the Government at the 2015 Autumn Statement.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans he has to evaluate the Universal Support Delivered Locally programme on completion of the pilot study.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
The assessment of the Universal Support trials is currently underway. The final evaluation will be published in late Spring 2016 and this will include the numbers of those who participated in the trials and the evaluation.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in each of the 11 pilot areas of universal support delivered locally (a) participated in that programme and (b) consented to have their information used for the purposes of evaluating that programme between September 2014 and September 2015.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
The assessment of the Universal Support trials is currently underway. The final evaluation will be published in late Spring 2016 and this will include the numbers of those who participated in the trials and the evaluation.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, under what circumstances a person within one of the universal credit north west pathfinder jobcentres, who meets the eligibility criteria for universal credit under the pathfinder programme, may start a claim for jobseeker's allowance instead of universal credit.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
A person who meets the eligibility requirements for claiming Universal Credit (UC) anywhere in Great Britain where UC is available can claim contributory-only Jobseeker’s Allowance, either alongside a UC claim or on its own. If a person meets the conditions for claiming UC they cannot claim income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the report entitled, Estimating the Early Labour Market Impacts of Universal Credit, published by his Department in December 2015, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of (a) the finding reported on page 27, that the additional work undertaken by participants in the study who were claiming universal credit is likely to consist of relatively few hours at relatively low wages and (b) the findings of the independent peer review, published in Annex B of the report, that the differences between the earnings of people in receipt of universal credit and people in the control group were not satisfactory significant.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
The main and most robust finding in the report is that UC has a substantial impact on the chances of people moving into work after they make a new claim. UC claimants were 8 percentage points more likely to get a job within 270 days of claiming than equivalent new claims to JSA made at the same time in similar areas by similar individuals.
The report and the peer review also set out findings on earnings. These are consistent with the extra people in work and suggest that the policy is working by making it more worthwhile and easier for claimants to do small amounts of work. That is, UC ensures that all work pays.
Most of the findings on earnings are statistically significant. As the report explains, we will be able to improve these estimates over time as we get more data.