Asked by: Emma Lewell (Labour - South Shields)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many referrals were made by Jobcentre Plus to employment support programmes that are (a) centrally contracted and (b) not centrally contracted by her Department to (i) voluntary and community sector providers, (ii) private sector providers, (iii) regional/local government providers and (iv) other in the last year.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The referral statistics for the centrally contacted employment support programmes are available on GOV.UK.
Restart Scheme statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Work and Health Programme statistics to May 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Statistics on Intensive Personalised Employment Support are planned for future publication and will be formally released, adhering to the Official Statistics guidance.
The information requested for employment support programmes not centrally contracted is not collated and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Emma Lewell (Labour - South Shields)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of incapacity benefit claimants receiving (a) Universal Credit Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity element and (b) Employment and Support Allowance are parents of dependent children.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
a) For UC, the Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity (LCWRA) and Disabled Child Entitlement breakdowns are currently temporarily unavailable on Stat-Xplore as part of the Households on Universal Credit dataset. Work is being carried out to resolve the issues and both affected measures are expected to be available in the next scheduled statistical release on 12 November 2024.
Once re-instated it should be possible to produce the number of households receiving the LCWRA element by Family Type.
Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest and, if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required. A user guide to the Universal Credit Official Statistics on Stat-Xplore is also available.
b) The table below shows the latest available number of claimants with Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) in payment who receive Child Benefit. The data is from February 2023.
| ESA Claimants | Percentage of total ESA Caseload |
Receives Child Benefit | 158,028 | 9.7 |
To note:
Asked by: Emma Lewell (Labour - South Shields)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the two-child limit in Universal Credit applies to households caring for an additional child under a special guardianship order.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Since 6 April 2017, families can claim support for up to two children, and there may be further entitlement for other children if they were born before April 2017 or if an exception applies. One of these exceptions is any child in a household who is living long-term with friends or family who would otherwise be at risk of entering the care system, which includes a child being cared for under a Special Guardianship Order.
Asked by: Emma Lewell (Labour - South Shields)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department plans to recruit Covert Surveillance Officers to gather evidence to prove or disprove offences relating to benefits claims.
Answered by Paul Maynard
DWP is recruiting Covert Surveillance Officers.
The Department’s Counter Fraud, Compliance & Debt directorate (CFCD) undertakes directed surveillance as part of the criminal investigation process.
All surveillance activity is applied for under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 and is conducted in line with the surveillance Code of Practice. It is undertaken only where necessary and proportionate to the alleged offence.
Asked by: Emma Lewell (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
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:
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:
Asked by: Emma Lewell (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
An answer to PQ 136620 was sent on 20/02/2023.
Asked by: Emma Lewell (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 - Shadow Minister (Women)
The department can confirm that between January 2021 - December 2021, South Tyneside Council refunded a Kickstart grant overpayment of £1,860.
Asked by: Emma Lewell (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
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.
Asked by: Emma Lewell (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
The department can confirm that no grants by South Tyneside Council were returned to DWP between 1st January 2022 and 30th November 2022.
Asked by: Emma Lewell (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
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.