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 alternative payment arrangements for fortnightly payment of universal credit were (a) requested, (b) rejected and (c) accepted in the most recent 12 month period for which figures are available.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department is unable to provide data relating to (a) requested and (b) rejected alternative payment arrangements for fortnightly payment of Universal Credit as the information is not readily available, and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
In response to part (c), the available information on the number of households on Universal Credit that receive More Frequent Payments or Scottish Choices More Frequent Payments is published and can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
Notes:
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, what reasons have been given by her Department for rejecting alternative payment arrangement requests for universal credit in the most recent 12 month period for which figures are available.
Answered by Will Quince
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would 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 alternative payment arrangements for weekly payment of universal credit were (a) requested, (b) rejected and (c) accepted in the most recent 12 month period for which figures are available.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department is unable to provide data relating to (a) requested and (b) rejected alternative payment arrangements for weekly payment of Universal Credit as the information is not readily available, and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
In response to part (c), the available information on the number of households on Universal Credit that receive More Frequent Payments or Scottish Choices More Frequent Payments is published and can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
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, whether she will make an assessment of the potential merits of permitting the direct payment of housing costs to landlords prior to eight weeks of arrears being built up, by giving all tenants the option at the outset of their claim of having their housing costs paid directly to their landlord.
Answered by Will Quince
Universal Credit payments are deliberately designed to mirror the world of work, where people take responsibility for budgeting their own income in order to be financially independent. In turn, this helps those not already working to prepare for moving back into employment. For claimants needing additional advice and support with personal budgeting, help is available from work coaches and case managers.
Alternative Payment Arrangements (APAs), such as a managed payment to landlord (MPTL), are available to enable the housing costs element to be paid directly to the landlord if the tenant is likely to have difficulty in managing their rent payments, or is in rent arrears. They can be requested by a claimant at any point during their claim. APAs will only be considered where a lack of financial capability poses a risk to the claimant, or their family, and the decision to implement one is assessed on a case by case basis.
Staff work closely with claimants and are trained to gauge a claimant’s financial needs at their initial interview, and throughout their claim, based on their personal circumstances.
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, what recent assessment she has made of the potential effect of delays at the ENGIE Document Scanning facility at Kidderminster on benefit claimants.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Mail Opening Unit at Kidderminster meets it’s contracted performance requirements and there are no delays. There are full business continuity measures in place and these are regularly reviewed by the relevant officials.
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, if she will take steps to identify how many homeless people who died in the most recent 12 month period for which figures are available had been in receipt of benefits in the 12 months prior to their death; and if she will publish information on the town or city in which each homeless person in receipt of benefits died.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department does not centrally collate data on the number of customers who are homeless which would be necessary to inform such an estimate and to do so would create a disproportionate cost to the Department.
We know that there are varied and complex reasons behind a person’s homelessness. That is why it is DWP’s priority to ensure that people experiencing homelessness, or at risk, get the appropriate support they need to stabilise their lives and move into work.
In order to fully evaluate the factors which cause homelessness, we commissioned a feasibility study and rapid evidence review into the causes of homelessness, in partnership with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The research included a rapid evidence assessment on the causes of homelessness in the UK, a review of models of homelessness developed outside of Government, and a feasibility study that provided advice on the development of quantitative models of homelessness that could be used for policy appraisal. We are currently working on next steps.
The publications can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/causes-of-homelessness-and-rough-sleeping-feasibility-study
We provide a range of support to help people who are homeless or at risk move closer to, or into, work. This includes safeguards to help people make a Universal Credit claim; access to the Jobcentre Plus employment offer with individual tailoring; and priority access to the Work and Health Programme. Work coaches are legally required to offer a voluntary referral to claimants they consider may be homeless or threatened with homelessness to a Local Housing Authority of the claimant’s choice.
We are supporting the manifesto commitment to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eradicate it altogether by 2027 through the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Reduction Taskforce, and commitments set out in the recent Rough Sleeping Strategy.
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 claims for maternity allowance were (a) received, (b) accepted and (c) rejected in the latest year for which figures are available.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
MA Claims received - 99750
MA Claims accepted - 86100
MA Claims refused – 14950
Figures provided are for the year March 2018 - February 2019
The data provided is sourced from management information.
Data are published quarterly on the number of commencements to Maternity Allowance on a rolling basis up to February 2019 at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/maternity-allowance-quarterly-statistics
The quarterly commencements do not sum to the annual claims accepted quoted above as the published data is subject to substantial retrospection from late notifications to the computer system, as noted in the publication. These figures also exclude a small proportion of clerical cases.
The reasons for the MA claims being rejected are:
Customer has not satisfied the Employment Test
Customer has not satisfied the Earnings Test
Customer has claimed MA whilst receiving SMP
Customer/ Employer has failed to respond to requests for information/ clarification within the requested timescales
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 instances of universal credit advance fraud have been investigated by her Department in each month since the introduction of full service.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department has captured discrete figures on the number of investigations for this type of fraud since February 2019. A breakdown of how many cases have been either completed, or are at some stage of investigation is shown in the table below.
Month | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September |
Number of cases | 200 | 900 | 1,600 | 800 | 900 | 1,300 | 4,800 | 5,300 |
*These figures have been sourced from internal management information and were not intended for public release. They are subject to change and should not be compared to other figures subsequently released by the Department. These figures have been rounded to the nearest 100.
As the scale of this issue has increased, we have dedicated more resource to the team investigating this fraud. We have also worked with operational staff to improve the referral process. This allows referrals to be routed to investigators and progressed more quickly.
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, what departmental pilot projects are active in (a) Birkenhead and (b) Wirral.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In terms of Jobcentre Plus, there are currently no departmental projects that (a) Birkenhead or (b) Wirral are involved with.
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, what the criteria must be fulfilled in cases of universal credit advance payment loan fraud for a person to be removed from universal credit and returned to the old benefits system.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department is committed to the prevention, detection and investigation of all types of benefit fraud. Since 18 September 2019, claimants are required to attend an interview at a Jobcentre to verify their identity before claiming a Universal Credit new claim advance. This change is helping protect claimants from identity fraud and becoming victims of third party scams.
The Department will review each case where a claim to Universal Credit was prompted by fraudulent activity. If there is clear evidence that the claimant had no involvement in the fraud, and where the claimant wishes us to do so, we will consider re-instating DWP legacy benefits.