Asked by: Ian Murray (Labour - Edinburgh South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 5 June 2020 to Question 43917, on Universal Credit, how many families in Scotland who have made a claim for universal credit since 23 March 2020 have three or more children.
Answered by Will Quince
From 23rd March 2020 to 5th May 2020, 3,500 of the 57,000 applications made by claimants with children to Universal Credit, who had three or more children in their family, were from Scotland
Asked by: Ian Murray (Labour - Edinburgh South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people (a) made an application for personal independence payments in Scotland (i) since 24 March 2020 and (b) in 2019; and how many of those people had their application (A) awarded and (B) disallowed (1) pre-assessment and (2) post-assessment.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The table below shows a comparison of the outcomes of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claims registered by claimants in Scotland throughout the whole of 2019 and between 24th March – 30th April 2020.
The latest published journey time from PIP registration to clearance in April 2020 in Scotland was 21 weeks on average for a new claim and 27 weeks for a Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to PIP reassessment claim. This goes some way to explaining why the majority of claims registered from 24th March 2020 onwards had not received an initial decision as of 30th April 2020, the latest date for which data is available.
It is worth noting that the majority of claims cleared since 24th March 2020 were cleared under the Special Rules for Terminally Ill claimants for which the average customer journey time in Great Britain was 5 working days for New Claims and 6 working days for DLA to PIP Reassessment claims.
Table 1: Comparison of outcomes of PIP claims registered in Scotland in 2019 and from 24th March 2020
| Date of registration to PIP |
| |
Outcome of PIP Claim | 2019 | 24th March 2020 Onwards | Total |
Awarded | 43,660 | 140 | 43,800 |
Disallowed post-referral to AP | 24,980 | - | 24,990 |
Disallowed pre-referral to the AP | 16,950 | - | 16,950 |
Withdrawn | 1,350 | 10 | 1,360 |
Case Still Outstanding | 7,600 | 3,220 | 10,810 |
Total number of PIP Registrations | 94,550 | 3,370 | 97,920 |
Source: PIP ADS
Notes
Asked by: Ian Murray (Labour - Edinburgh South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans she has to extend the suspension of benefit reviews and reassessments for (a) universal credit, (b) employment and support allowance and (c) personal independence payment beyond 24 June 2020.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
We are currently in the process of reviewing this measure, and will confirm next steps as soon as possible.
Asked by: Ian Murray (Labour - Edinburgh South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will take steps to (a) cancel or (b) suspend all pre-existing benefits sanctions during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
We are focused on the processing of claims and will not be checking conditionality compliance regarding preparing for, looking for and being available for work until the end of June. This means that claimants won’t receive any new sanctions if they are unable to meet these commitments during this period.
We currently have no plans to cancel or suspend pre-existing sanctions. Claimants who were sanctioned before Covid 19 can continue to apply for hardship payments and are no worse off as a result of the pandemic. We continue to review our policies as the situation evolves.