Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what reduction in fraud and error in the benefit system he expects by the end of 2024.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP measures fraud and error in the welfare system via annual national statistics published each May.
The Department has a target to save at least £1.3 billion in 2023-24 from its dedicated counter fraud and error resource. Further information on this is included in the DWP Annual Report and Accounts (ARA) Report, available on GOV.UK. The ARA report for financial year 23/24 is expected to be published Summer 2024.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to his Department's press release entitled Government Minister urges pensioners to check eligibility for Pension Credit as Week of Action kicks off, published on 12 June 2023, how many additional claims for pension credit have been received as a result of the Invitation to Claim mailing trial.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The ‘Invitation to Claim’ trial ran from July 2023 in ten Local Authority areas across Great Britain: Eastbourne, Teignbridge, Pendle, Charnwood, Vale of White Horse, Redcar and Cleveland, Craven, Harrow, Powys and West Lothian. Approximately 2,500 pensioner households were sent letters encouraging them to contact DWP and make a claim.
In line with the commitment given last year, we will be publishing a report covering the results from the trial shortly. Once the report has been published, we will have an indication of how many people applied for Pension Credit as a result of the trial.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 27 November 2023 to Question 2787 on Universal Credit: National Insurance Contributions, whether he expects that all National Insurance records will be fully updated by HMRC by April 2024.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP completed the work to send 22 million records of Universal Credit customers to HMRC in order for them to update their National Insurance records in 2023. There remain a small subset of cases that need to be worked through manually. This work is in progress and will be completed by summer 2024. Records of customers who are over, or close to state pension age that need manual work are being prioritised.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many families in Northern Ireland will receive the cost of living payment as a result of being in receipt of low-income benefits in February 2024.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Social Security is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans he has to quality assure average times taken to make decisions on Access to Work assessments to National Statistics publication standard.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Access to Work Official Statistics are published annually and show the number of people who had Access to Work provision approved, number of people who received at least one Access to Work payment and Access to Work expenditure.
However, the publication does not include average time taken to make decisions as the data on this is not of sufficient quality to meet the standard requirement for an Official Statistics publication. There are currently no plans to quality assure the data to an Official Statistics publication standard.
DWP Official Statistics are produced and published in line with the 3 pillars of the Code of Practice for Statistics which are built around three main concepts, or pillars:
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people were in receipt of Universal Credit in December (a) 2021 and (b) 2023.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department regularly publishes Universal Credit statistics. Statistics of the number of people who are on Universal Credit each month are published monthly and are currently available to December 2023 on Stat-Xplore. Monthly statistics of the number of households who have received a Universal Credit payment are published every three months on Stat-Xplore and are currently available to August 2023, with statistics to November 2023 due to be published on Tuesday 13th February 2024 at 09:30am.
Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user and, if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people have been convicted for offences relating to the fraudulent encashment of state pension payments which were for deceased recipients in each of the last five years.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department is unable to provide convictions data for State Pension fraud cases relating to deceased individuals.
State Pension fraud and error is low, but it does exist, with £100m estimated to have been overpaid in State Pension in 2022/23.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make a comparative estimate of the number of Universal Credit claimants in the no work related requirements group between 2017 and 2022.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Official statistics of the number of people on Universal Credit by conditionality group are published monthly on Stat-Xplore and available from April 2015 to November 2023.
The latest Universal Credit statistical bulletin provides information about the increase in the number of people in the no work related requirements conditionality regime since October 2018. The Universal Credit caseload is evolving as cases migrate from the previous system and they will be representative of the broader benefit population.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what was the cost to the public purse of the communications campaign to raise awareness of Pension Credit between April 2022 and October 2023.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
To raise awareness of Pension Credit and increase take-up, the Department launched a nationwide marketing and communications campaign in April 2022.
This campaign has included advertising on national TV, in regional and national newspapers, on local and national broadcast radio, medical centre and Post Office screens across Great Britain, as well as advertising on buses and digital street displays. Online marketing activity also included promotion of Pension Credit on social media, via internet search engines and sponsored advertising on targeted websites that pensioners, their friends and family are likely to visit.
Our Pension Credit Day of Action last year saw claims more than double to 275% compared to the same week the previous year - and we’re continuing to build on this success through various creative no-cost media campaigns to boost awareness of the benefit through broadcast, radio and print media.
The number of claims received in the financial year 2022/23 was higher than over the same period the year before.
The total cost of the campaign in the 2022/23 financial year was £2,785,927.23
The cost of the campaign in the 2023/24 financial year to October 2024 is £485,939.07.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many calls were received by his Department's disability service centre's enquiry lines in each of the last two years.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The table below shows data for Calls Offered to Agent Queue (number of calls received) for Disability Services, for each of the last two complete reporting years, 2021/22 and 2022/23.
Reporting Year | Directorate | Calls Offered to Agent Queue |
2021-2022 | Disability Services | 7,788,882 |
2022-2023 | Disability Services | 8,415,485 |
|
|
|
Total | 16,204,367 | |
Please note this information is derived from the Department’s management information designed solely for the purpose of helping the Department to manage its business. As such, it has not been subjected to the rigorous quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics. As DWP holds the information internally, we have released it. However, it is possible information held by DWP may change due to operational reasons and we recommend that caution be applied when using it.