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Written Question
Personal Independence Payment
Tuesday 2nd May 2023

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average decision wait time was for new Personal Independence Payment applications over the last year; and how many applications were awaiting a decision on 25 April 2023.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

The average decision wait times for new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) applications can be found in the latest published release: “Personal Independence Payment statistics to January 2023”. Particularly, table 1A shows PIP average actual clearance times (median number of weeks) for normal rules, new claims in England and Wales.

Notes:

  • Clearance time measures do not include claims that were withdrawn by the claimant or claims that were disallowed by the DWP prior to referral to the assessment providers (e.g. for failure to meet basic eligibility criteria).

The number of PIP applicants awaiting a decision has been interpreted as those who had registered a claim, but which had not been cleared. This includes some who may eventually be disallowed pre-assessment, those awaiting an assessment, and those awaiting a decision following an assessment. On 31 January 2023 this stood at 207,000 claims.

Source: PIP Atomic Data Store (ADS).


Notes:

  • Data excludes Scotland, in line with the latest published figures on PIP;
  • Figure is for new claims normal rules only; and
  • Figure is rounded to the nearest 1,000.

Written Question
Department for Work and Pensions: Written Questions
Tuesday 21st February 2023

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when he will plans to answer Question 136620 on Universal Credit tabled by the hon. Member for South Shields on 30 January 2023.

Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

An answer to PQ 136620 was sent on 20/02/2023.


Written Question
South Tyneside Council: Finance
Tuesday 21st February 2023

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much grant money was returned to his Department by South Tyneside Council in 2021.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The department can confirm that between January 2021 - December 2021, South Tyneside Council refunded a Kickstart grant overpayment of £1,860.


Written Question
Universal Credit
Monday 20th February 2023

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many children live in households which are in receipt of Universal Credit but have experienced a deduction to that benefit in each parliamentary constituency in the most recent month for which data is available.

Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The requested information is provided in the attached spreadsheet.

Table 1 shows the requested analysis of number of children in Universal Credit households and number of children in Universal Credit households with deductions for claims with a payment due in August 2022 by Parliamentary Constituency in Great Britain (GB).

Accompanying Notes:

1. Figures per low level geography are rounded to the nearest 100, total claims at GB level are rounded to the nearest 1,000. Percentages are rounded to the nearest percent. The sum of individual low level geographies may not sum to the total figure due to rounding.

2. Deductions include advance repayments, third party deductions and all other deductions, but exclude sanctions and fraud penalties which are reductions of benefit rather than deductions.

3. Children are defined here as being people who are declared as living in the same household as the UC claimant(s) and who are under the age of 20. The number of children may not be equal to the number of dependent children in the household who are eligible for child element for various reasons. This includes children over the age of 16 in non-advanced full-time education, looked-after children and, other young people living in multigenerational households whose parents are not the claimant. Those affected by the policy to provide support for a maximum of two children may also have a larger number of children compared to the number of children entitled to the child element in their household.

4. Figures are provisional and are subject to retrospective change as later data becomes available.

5. The 'unknown' label relates to claims for which a constituency could not be determined due to incomplete postcode information.

6. Data for August 2022 has been provided in line with the latest available UC Household Statistics.

7. Claim numbers and number of children on UC will not match official statistics caseloads due to methodological differences.


Written Question
South Tyneside Council: Finance
Thursday 9th February 2023

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much grant money was returned to his Department by South Tyneside Council in the period between 1 January 2022 and 30 November 2022.

Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The department can confirm that no grants by South Tyneside Council were returned to DWP between 1st January 2022 and 30th November 2022.


Written Question
Universal Credit
Friday 3rd February 2023

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many children live in households in receipt of Universal Credit in each parliamentary constituency in the most recent month for which data is available.

Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

Statistics on the number of households in receipt of Universal Credit are published every three months. The latest statistics are available by the number of children in the household and by Westminster Parliamentary Constituency, to August 2022, on Stat-Xplore.


Written Question
Department for Work and Pensions: South Tyneside
Friday 3rd February 2023

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much money South Tyneside Council has returned to his Department from grants allocated in December 2022.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

DWP can confirm that no grants were allocated to South Tyneside Council in December 2022 nor any returns made in December 2022 and January 2023.


Written Question
Department of Work and Pensions: South Tyneside
Thursday 26th January 2023

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much money South Tyneside Council has returned to his Department from grants allocated over the last two years as of 23 January 2023.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

Having looked at various systems we have determined that this information is not centrally held and so locating, analysing and retrieving the data would incur disproportionate costs.


Written Question
Universal Credit: Young People
Monday 16th January 2023

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support her Department provides for young people in supported housing when they earn enough to take them off Universal Credit and lose their entitlement to full housing benefits.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

DWP provides a range of employment support to different groups including young people who may live in Supported Housing. This includes helping claimants to make a Universal Credit claim as well as providing specialised tailored support through Jobcentre Plus including eligible access to the Flexible Support Fund, individual Work Coach support and priority access to the Work and Health Programme.

The income taper in Housing Benefit ensures claimants will always be financially better off working than not being in work.


Written Question
Poverty: North of England
Thursday 17th November 2022

Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)

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 the increase in absolute child poverty in (a) the North East and (b) Yorkshire and the Humber.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

No assessment has been made of child poverty in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber for 2020/21. Given the impact of the pandemic on the size and quality of sample data, DWP statisticians concluded that for several of the breakdowns it would be difficult to make meaningful assessments of trends and changes in 2020/21 compared with the pre-Covid position. The Chief Statistician has therefore taken the decision not to publish additional breakdowns for regional child poverty in 2020/21.

The Government is committed to reducing poverty and supporting low-income families. In 2022/23 we will spend over £242 billion through the welfare system in Great Britain including £108 billion on people of working age.

With 1.25 million job vacancies across the UK, our focus is firmly on supporting parents to move into, and progress in work, an approach which is based on clear evidence about the importance of parental employment - particularly where it is full-time - in substantially reducing the risks of child poverty. The latest available data on in-work poverty shows that in 2019/20, children in households where all adults were in work were around six times less likely to be in absolute poverty (before housing costs) than children in a household where nobody works.

In 2021, compared to 2010, there were nearly 1 million fewer workless households and almost 590,000 fewer children in workless households in the UK. In 2020/21, there were 200,000 fewer children in absolute poverty (before housing costs) than in 2009/10.

To help people into work, including parents, our Plan for Jobs is providing broad ranging support for all Jobseekers with our Sector Based Work Academy Programmes (SWAP), Job Entry Targeted Support and Restart scheme. We are also extending the support Jobcentres provide to people in work and on low incomes. Through a staged roll-out, which started in April 2022, around 2.1 million low-paid benefit claimants will be eligible for support to progress into higher-paid work.

Around 1.9 million of the most disadvantaged pupils are eligible for and claiming a free school meal, saving families around £400 per year. In addition, around 1.25 million more infants enjoy a free, healthy and nutritious meal at lunchtime following the introduction of universal infant free school meals. The National School Breakfast Provision programme (NSBP) is providing funding of up to £24 million in a two-year contract to continue our support for school breakfast provision until July 2023 supporting pupils in up to 2,500 schools that meet our criteria for levels of disadvantage.

The Government is also investing £200 million a year to continue the Holiday Activities and Food Programme, which benefitted over 600,000 children last summer, and we have increased the value of the Healthy Start Scheme by a third to £4.25 a week.

The government understands the pressures people are facing with the cost of living and has taken further decisive action to support people with their energy bills. The government’s Energy Price Guarantee will save a typical British household around £700 this winter, based on what energy price would’ve been under the current price cap – reducing bills by roughly a third. This support will be in place from 1 October 2022 until 31 March 2023. A review will be launched to consider more targeted measures to support households with their energy bills after this period. This is in addition to the over £37bn of cost of living support announced earlier this year which includes the £400 non-repayable discount to eligible households provided through the Energy Bills Support Scheme.

The £37bn also includes up to £650 in cost of living Payments (paid in 2 lump sums of £326 and £324) which have targeted support at around 8 million low-income households on means-tested benefits. In addition, 6 million eligible disabled people have received a one-off disability Cost of Living Payment of £150 and pensioner households will receive a one-off payment of £300 alongside the Winter Fuel Payment from this month.

In collaboration with Local Authorities we have a well-established system of hardship payments, including the Discretionary Housing Payments, available as a safeguard for if claimants demonstrate they cannot meet their immediate and most essential needs due to the rise in the cost of living. For those who require additional support, we extended the Household Support Fund in England, which will be providing up to £421m of support for those most in need for the period October 2022 - March 2023 and is being delivered by Upper Tier and Unitary Councils. In the case of South Tyneside, the local authority has been allocated £1,484,854.01 for this period. The devolved administrations have been allocated £79 million through the Barnett formula as usual.