Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of procedures in her Department to enable employees whose health has been shown by to be affected by intensive online and computer work as part of their employment to be redeployed to alternative work in her Department.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Department for Work and Pensions has well-established Display Screen Equipment (DSE) procedure in place for dealing with these concerns. These are regarded to exceed best practice, notably by exceeding statutory requirements by applying to all DWP employees, not just those who cite illness as a contributing factor.
DSE management within the DWP has a preventive setting and forms part of our mandatory health and safety training. All employees complete interactive DSE training every 3 years or when changes to their work environment or equipment occur. At the end of this training a DSE risk assessment is completed which will inform line management if concerns are raised. This allows management and the individual to discuss what reasonable adjustments are required to mitigate the concerns raised. We can offer a range of reasonable adjustments to our employees, one of which might be redeployment to other duties where it is feasible to do so.
Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of internal advice given by her Department on pension rights to employees being made redundant on medical grounds.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
My Department has not given any advice on pension rights to employees being made redundant on medical grounds and it takes care not to do so. Employees are directed to the pensions literature published by the pensions administrator, My Civil Service Pension, for information not advice, about efficiency departure compensation and pensions. Employees are otherwise encouraged to seek private independent financial advice.
Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of the staff employed by her Department are apprentices.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
DWP’s headcount at the end of January 2018 is 83,147 of which 2,563 are currently undertaking an apprenticeship. This equates to 3.1% of DWP employees as of 31 January 2018.
Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what funding was (a) allocated to Jobcentre Plus for English for Speakers of Other Languages courses in (i) 2014-15, (ii) 2015-16 and (iii) 2016-17 and (b) spent in each of those years.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
In 2014 funding of courses for Speakers of Other Languages in England was primarily provided through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Jobcentre Plus which were responsible for making referrals to the most appropriate provision to meet the customer needs. For Scotland and Wales, the Department for Work and Pensions established contracted provision for English Language Requirements in November 2014 with a total value of £14.06m, with anticipated spend of £3.2m in 2014/15, £7.9m in 2015/16 and £2.9m for 2016/17.
Due to the low numbers of participants using this provision, a review was undertaken in Summer 2015, to consider future commercial viability of these contracts. Following consultation with Jobcentre Plus and providers, Ministers agreed a negotiated early termination of the provision, with no additional costs for DWP. Consequently total expenditure for English Language Requirements was 1.04m over the contract period, spending £87,000 in 2014/15, £625,000 in 2015/16 and £330,000 in 2016/17.
Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the effect of the current funding cap of £42,100 on the (a) number of people from the deaf community accessing the access to work scheme and (b) levels of funding available for members of the deaf community; and whether he has plans to change the level of that cap.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt
Officials have regular discussions with a wide variety of groups representing scheme customers and suppliers. In recent years such organisations representing deaf customers' issues have included:
In addition Access to Work officials have had many more discussions with organisations who represent the deaf community’s interests as part of a broader agenda as well as presenting updates to the department’s operational stakeholder engagement forum (OSEF) which acts as a broader forum for Access to Work to engage with various groups of stakeholders.
In May 2015 the Government published an Equality Analysis of the impact of the reforms to Access to Work, which may be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/426416/future-of-access-to-work-equality-analysis.pdf
From April this year the Cap is set at £42,100 per annum, calculated at one-and-a-half times the prevailing annual average earnings figure. There are no plans to alter the current uprating mechanism. We will be reflecting on Access to Work as we continue our work stemming from the recent Green Paper.
Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions he has had with organisations representing the deaf community on the effectiveness of the access to work scheme.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt
Officials have regular discussions with a wide variety of groups representing scheme customers and suppliers. In recent years such organisations representing deaf customers' issues have included:
In addition Access to Work officials have had many more discussions with organisations who represent the deaf community’s interests as part of a broader agenda as well as presenting updates to the department’s operational stakeholder engagement forum (OSEF) which acts as a broader forum for Access to Work to engage with various groups of stakeholders.
In May 2015 the Government published an Equality Analysis of the impact of the reforms to Access to Work, which may be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/426416/future-of-access-to-work-equality-analysis.pdf
From April this year the Cap is set at £42,100 per annum, calculated at one-and-a-half times the prevailing annual average earnings figure. There are no plans to alter the current uprating mechanism. We will be reflecting on Access to Work as we continue our work stemming from the recent Green Paper.
Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit claimants there were in Blackpool South constituency in (a) June 2015, (b) December 2015 and (c) the latest month for which figures are available.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
The information you have requested is available in the official Universal Credit statistics: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/universal-credit-statistics.
Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of recipients of employment and support allowance referred to the Work Programme in (a) Blackpool South constituency and (b) Blackpool local authority area moved into sustained employment in (i) 2012, (ii) 2013, (iii) 2014 and (iv) 2015.
Answered by Esther McVey
The information showing the number of Work Programme Referrals, Job Outcomes and Sustainment Payments, up to December 2014, by various geographies can be found at:
http://tabulation-tool.dwp.gov.uk/WorkProg/tabtool.html
Guidance for users can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-tabulation-tool-guidance