Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they will answer the letter that he wrote to the Lord Chancellor concerning Arcadia pensions on 2 March.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
A reply was sent to the Noble Lord on 15 April 2021.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what, if any, assessment they have made of the level at which child benefit would need to be paid to ensure that no more than 100,000 children of single-parent families are in poverty.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
No assessment has been made.
This Government champions the principle of work as the best route out of poverty and towards financial independence. Getting parents back to work and supporting them to progress is at the heart of our sustainable approach to tackling child poverty. Our approach is based on clear evidence about the importance of parental employment, particularly where it is full-time, in substantially reducing the risk of child poverty and is underpinned by our Plan for Jobs.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the number of children who would be living in poverty if their household income fell by (1), £1,000, (2) £2,000, (3) £3,000, (4) £4,000, (5) £5,000, (6) £10,000, (7) £15,000, or (8) £20,000, per annum.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
No assessment has been made.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the number of children living in poverty, broken down by (1) single-, and (2) two-, parent households.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
Statistics on the number and percentage of people living in low income households over time, including children and those in work, are set out in the annual "Households Below Average Income" publication.
In 2018/19 2,400,000 children were living in absolute low income, before housing costs. 700,000 were in single parent households, 1,700,000 were in couple households.
These statistics are also available on Stat-Xplore: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/jsf/login.xhtml
Guidance in the use of Stat-Xplore is available here: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/index.html
We are committed to supporting the lowest-paid families through the pandemic and is why we’ve targeted our support to those most in need by raising the living wage, spending hundreds of billions to safeguard jobs, boosting welfare support by billions and introducing the Covid Winter Grant Scheme to help children and families stay warm and well-fed during the coldest months.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, how many Universal Credit claimants in each parliamentary constituency have had money deducted; and what was (1) the average size of the amount deducted, (2) the total amount deducted, and (3) the proportion of each sum deducted to repay advance payments.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
From 3rd April 2020, deductions from Universal Credit for some government debt, such as Tax Credits, benefit overpayments and Social Fund Loans were suspended for 3 months. This was done to ease the financial pressure of debt recovery on benefit claimants and to also allow Debt Management staff to be re-deployed to focus on the unprecedented volume of new claims received during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Universal Credit advance repayments are made gradually over 12 months, and deductions are capped at 30 per cent of a claimant’s standard allowance. This is further to the reduction of the overall maximum level of deductions from 40 per cent to 30 per cent of the standard allowance since October 2019.
From October 2021, the repayment period will be extended from 12 months to 24 months and the deductions cap will be reduced from 30 per cent to 25 per cent.
For those who find themselves in unexpected hardship, advance repayments can be deferred for up to three months in certain cases.
The requested information surrounding deductions to Universal Credit payments by parliamentary constituency is shown in the attached table.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government (1) how many, and (2) which types of, algorithms they use to decide access or eligibility for welfare payment or services.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
Decisions on applications for welfare payments and services are made by the Department colleagues. The Department does not use algorithms to make decisions in this way. The Department does use business rules, some of which are automated and focus on everyday repetitive processing tasks so that colleagues can spend more time supporting vulnerable claimants.
All entitlement and calculation rules are an implementation of welfare policies, which are delivered in accordance with relevant legislation.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many applications for personal independence payment (a) lapsed and (b) were withdrawn due to the death of the applicant in the most recent 12 months for which data is available.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
It has not proved possible to respond to the Rt hon. Member in the time available before Dissolution.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 31 October 2019 to Question 5404, what the working day turn around for maternity allowance claims was before 15 October 2019.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The working day turnaround for Maternity Allowance claims averaged 55 working days up to the end of September 2019 and increased to 60 days by 15 October 2019.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many applications for employment and support allowance (a) lapsed and (b) were withdrawn due to the death of the applicant in the most recent 12 months for which data are available.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The dataset used to provide Employment and Support Allowance statistics does not contain the relevant information needed to measure this. To provide a reply would require us to link together several additional complex datasets and quality assure the results. Although theoretically possible, it is estimated that this would take in excess of 4 working days and would therefore incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many applications for universal credit (a) lapsed and (b) were withdrawn due to the death of the applicant in the most recent 12 months for which data is available.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
It has not proved possible to respond to the Rt hon. Member in the time available before Dissolution.