Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Government is taking to help workers from the retail industry who have lost their jobs transition to new roles.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Jobcentre Plus is geared-up to offer advice to those claiming welfare benefits.
Universal Credit has replaced six working age benefits with one; to simplify the welfare system and make work pay. As a result, people claiming Universal Credit move into work faster, stay in work longer and spend more time looking to increase their earnings. Universal Credit also provides more help with childcare costs, a dedicated Work Coach and scraps the 16, 24 and 30 hour ‘cliff edges’.
Through Jobcentre Plus, individuals can get advice on finding a job; help with retraining or skills advice, CV and job applications; and access to new vacancies we record every day. They can also access a range of tailored opportunities to improve their likelihood of entering or re-entering the labour market, including demand-led training for higher skilled jobs in specific sectors.
Jobcentre Plus also provides numerous leads and good practice ideas to help people direct their job search in the most effective manner.
DWP also supports people affected by redundancy through the Rapid Response Service (RRS). This is designed to give tailored support and advice to employers and their employees when faced with redundancy. Each Jobcentre Plus district deploys resources according to the situation and the requirements of those affected. The RRS is delivered in partnership with a range of national and local partners, including National Careers Service and local service providers.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimate she has made of the number of women and girls living below the poverty line.
Answered by Will Quince
National Statistics on the number of children in relative and absolute low income are set out in the annual "Households Below Average Income" (HBAI) publication.
In the latest low income statistics, the number of women (including those of pension age) and female children below the poverty line decreased in three out of four measures compared to 2009/10. In 2017/18 there were 3.8 million women in absolute poverty before housings costs, down from 3.9 million in 2009/10. In 2017/18 there were 1.2 million female children in poverty in absolute poverty before housing costs, down from 1.3 million in 2009/10.
The above information has been sourced from the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistics using Stat-Xplore. Stat-Xplore can be accessed using: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to use Stat-Xplore can be found here:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/index.html.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to compensate women born in the 1950s who were adversely affected by changes to the state pension age.
Answered by Guy Opperman
Successive Governments have made necessary decisions to equalise and increase the State Pension age. State Pension age reform has focused on maintaining the right balance between sustainability of State Pension, equality and fairness between generations in the face of demographic change.
Even after equalising women’s State Pension age with men’s, women will spend on average around 2 years more in receipt of their state pension because of their longer life expectancy. If we had not equalised State Pension age, women would be expected to spend on average over 40 per cent of their adult lives in retirement.
During the passage of the 2011 Act, the Government listened to the concerns of those affected and this is why we introduced a concession worth over £1 billion in order to limit the impact on those women who would be most affected by the changes. This concession reduced the proposed increase in State Pension age for over 450,000 men and women, and means that no woman will see her pension age change by more than 18 months, relative to the 1995 Act timetable.
For people who simply can’t work, our welfare system will continue to provide a strong safety net, as it does for people of all ages now. Any women experiencing hardship, including problems such as unemployment, disability, and coping with caring responsibilities, can already claim support from the welfare system. The Government is committed to supporting the vulnerable and spends over £50 billion a year on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions.
The new State Pension is more generous for many women. Over three million women stand to gain an average of £550 extra per year by 2030 as a result of recent State Pension reforms.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry 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 two-child limit for universal credit and tax credits on disabled parents with more than two children.
Answered by Lord Sharma
It is the Department’s view that providing support for a maximum of two children or qualifying young persons in Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit ensures fairness between those supporting themselves solely through work and those receiving benefits.
The Government assessed the impact of the policy from an equality and human rights perspective throughout its development and in preparation for its implementation. The Department published statistics related to the first year of policy implementation in June 2018 and will publish updated statistics on 31st July.
An impact assessment of the policy of providing support for a maximum of two children in Child Tax Credits and Universal Credit, which considered the impact of the policy on families and other protected groups, including those with disabilities, was published in July 2015 and is available at:
https://www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-assessments/ia15-006e.pdf
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to work with (a) charities and (b) advice centres to improve the advice and support provided to disabled people completing applications and undergoing assessments for benefits.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
We are absolutely committed to improving the overall claimant experience as this is what claimants rightly expect and deserve. We continue to engage with charities, academics, think tanks, and disabled people through several forums to ensure that options for improvement are informed by a wide variety of perspectives and views.
Stakeholders are currently involved in our ongoing work on improving the PIP2 questionnaire and design of the Light Touch Review. The PIP Toolkit is accessible to all third parties to assist in the PIP application process. In addition, there is signposting for additional resources on www.gov.uk/PIP. In the 2017 “Improving Lives: The Future of Health, Work and Disability” Command Paper, we committed to reforming the WCA, and to working with external stakeholders to ensure that we get any future changes right.
From 1 April 2019 Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland are now delivering the Help to Claim service which supports claimants in making a new Universal Credit claim or moving from a legacy benefit to Universal Credit because of a change of circumstances. Help to Claim runs alongside the support that Jobcentres can provide and offers tailored, practical support to help people make their claim up to receiving their first full correct payment on time. It is widely available online, through a Freephone number and face to face through local Citizens Advice services. There is early evidence that the Help to Claim service is supporting those who most struggle to access DWP’s services, particularly those with multiple complex needs and health conditions.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much her Department has spent on administering reviews and appeals against disability benefits in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The table below gives the operational costs for disability benefits for the years from 2013/14 to 2018/19. This is the only comparable data available for the period requested due to changes in benefit delivery. The question asks for the cost of ‘administering reviews’ which is not a recognised DWP terminology so we have assumed the request is for the cost of Reconsiderations, as well as Appeals.
Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information which was collected for internal Departmental use only and has not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. The data should therefore be treated with caution.
| 18/19 | 17/18 | 16/17 | 15/16 | 14/15 | 13/14 |
£m | £m | £m | £m | £m | £m | |
Appeals and Reconsiderations | 66.93 | 66.07 | 49.33 | 37.21 | 39.20 | 51.03 |
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to increase the (a) provision and (b) affordability of childcare for children of working parents in school summer holidays.
Answered by Will Quince
I refer the Hon. Member to the answer to Question 273325, answered on 9 July 2019 -
The Government recognises that childcare costs can affect parents’ decisions to both obtain and maintain employment and is committed to removing barriers that prevent parents moving into work.
To overcome this barrier to employment, Universal Credit claimants are able to claim up to 85 per cent of their childcare costs, compared to 70 per cent on the legacy system. This can be worth up to £13,000 a year for families with two children.
We recognise the difficulty that some claimants might have in paying childcare costs over the summer holidays and have undertaken significant work to increase work coach awareness, understanding and promotion of both the Universal Credit childcare offer and the wider government childcare offer. This is to ensure that parents who are eligible for the 15 hours of free childcare for disadvantaged families with 2-year-old children, and 30 hours of free childcare for working families, take these up. These free childcare offers can be used in combination with Universal Credit support for childcare.
In addition to this, budgeting advances are available for eligible claimants that can be used to cover the cost of paying additional upfront childcare costs or a deposit that might be needed during the school holidays.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to ensure accurate verification of universal credit claimants who request an advance.
Answered by Lord Sharma
As of June 2019, potential fraudulent advance claims equate to less than 1 per cent of all Universal Credit claims.
The Department has been working to improve knowledge and awareness of advances fraud amongst Jobcentre and Service Centre staff. Guidance has also been issued to ensure that staff are aware how to refer cases of suspected fraud to the Department’s Counter-fraud team.
We are developing our service iteratively and improving any areas in the service that may currently be presenting issues, to minimise the risk of fraud while ensuring that we can continue to provide financial support to those claimants who need it.
We cannot share advance detail of the specific security improvements we are making but this includes improving our process for verifying a claimant’s circumstances.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps he is taking to tackle universal credit fraud.
Answered by Lord Sharma
The Department takes its obligation to prevent, detect and investigate fraud very seriously and will investigate all claims where fraud may have been committed. We have recently set up a dedicated team to investigate a specific type of emergent fraud, and we are also committed to the use of penalties such as prosecutions and tough financial penalties to discourage fraudulent behaviour.
The Department has also recently been working to further improve knowledge and awareness of Universal Credit (UC) fraud amongst Jobcentre and Service Centre staff. Guidance has also been issued to ensure that all staff are aware how to quickly refer cases of suspected fraud to the Department’s Counter-fraud team.
Most welfare losses, across Government, arise from claimants failing to report changes of circumstances. UC provides a single, digital interface through which claimants can more easily report these changes. UC also allows us to adjust benefit entitlement in line with changing circumstances in real time. Internal and external data matches are increasingly helping to inform benefit payments and alerting staff to check for any undeclared changes in people’s circumstances. Once UC is fully rolled out, we expect cross-welfare losses to fraud, error and overpayments to be reduced by around £1 billion per year
As of June 2019, potential fraudulent advance claims equate to less than 1 per cent of all Universal Credit claims.