Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many notifications the Health and Safety Executive has received on health and safety matters related to multi-storey buildings in each region of the UK and in each year since 2005; and what the principal reason was for each of those notifications.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
The ‘Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013’ (RIDDOR) puts duties on employers, some self-employed and people in control of work premises (the Responsible Person) to report certain serious workplace accidents, occupational diseases and specified dangerous occurrences (near misses). Generally, such notifications are made in relation to workplace incidents and do not provide for the reporting of general health and safety concerns in relation to buildings.
There are two specific exceptions to this, firstly in Regulation 11 of RIDDOR which covers the reporting of gas related incidents in buildings, not just workplaces and secondly, in Schedule 2 of RIDDOR, which concerns itself with ‘Dangerous Occurrences’ in relation to structural collapse.
Where required under Regulation 11, reports are made to Health and Safety Executive (HSE) via an online form which asks for details of the incident and in what type of building it occurred (i.e. house, flat up to 4 stories, flat over 4 stories, bungalow, maisonette, other). HSE reviews all reports received against its own regulatory model to assess where further enforcement action is appropriate.
The information is not held in a readily accessible format and to extract and collate it would incur disproportionate costs.
Dangerous Occurrence reports (Schedule 2 of RIDDOR) require that the responsible person reports the unintentional collapse or partial collapse of any structure, which involves a fall of more than 5 tonnes of material; or any floor or wall of any place of work, arising from, or in connection with, ongoing construction work (including demolition, refurbishment and maintenance). The RIDDOR notification system does not provide for the reporting of building type in this case.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many (a) chartered structural engineers and (b) fire engineers with expertise in cladding and external wall systems are employed by each Health and Safety Executive office.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has a national team of construction engineering specialist inspectors providing a broad range of structural and civil engineering expertise in support of HSE’s operations to ensure workplace risks are being properly managed and controlled. The team comprises one chartered structural engineer based in HSE’s Bedford office, the remainder are civil engineers.
HSE does not employ fire engineers with expertise in cladding and external wall systems.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the role of the Health and Safety Executive is in relation to ensuring the safe installation of cladding and external wall insulation systems.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
The Health and Safety Executive is the national regulator for workplace health and safety. HSE’s role in relation to the installation of cladding and external wall insulation systems is to ensure that health and safety risks during the construction work are properly managed and controlled.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate his Department has made of the proportion of people (a) with hearing loss and (b) who list their primary medical condition as difficulty in hearing who were (i) in employment, (ii) economically inactive and (iii) unemployed in the last five years for which figures are available.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
Table 1 provides an estimate of the proportion of working age people who are in employment, who are unemployed and who are economically inactive who:
a) Report they have a difficulty in hearing (either as their main long term health condition or alongside a different main long term health condition)
b) Report that their difficulty in hearing is their main long term health condition.
Data has been provided for calendar years of 2012 and from 2014 to 2016 in the table below. A change in how the Annual Population Survey captures information on long term health conditions was made in April-June 2013. This change led to a break in the series and therefore data is not available for the entirety of the 2013 calendar year and has therefore not been provided. Data for 2012 is not comparable with data from 2014 onwards.
Please also note the full list of caveats below the table for further methodological information on how this data was calculated and how these figures should be interpreted appropriately.
Table 1 – The proportion of working age people in employment, who are unemployed and who are economically inactive for people who have a difficulty in hearing
| People with a difficulty in hearing as either their main long term health condition or alongside a different main long term health condition | People whose main long term health condition is a difficulty in hearing | ||||
| Employed (%) | Unemployed (%) | Economically Inactive (%) | Employed (%) | Unemployed (%) | Economically Inactive (%) |
2012 | 47.1 | 6.5 | 46.4 | 66.2 | 9.4 | 24.3 |
2013 | Data not available due to a change in how the Annual Population Survey captures information on health conditions. Data for 2014 onwards should not be compared with data before 2013. | |||||
2014 | 46.6 | 4.7 | 48.6 | 67.3 | 5.6 | 27.1 |
2015 | 47.9 | 4.6 | 47.5 | 69.4 | 6.3 | 24.3 |
2016 | 47.1 | 4.0 | 49.0 | 70.0 | 4.8 | 25.2 |
Source: Annual Population Survey, January to December, 2012, and 2014 to 2016
Notes:
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he plans to take to reduce the (a) number of appeals against decisions on personal independence payments and (b) success rate of such appeals.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
7%, of all Personal Independence Payment (PIP) decisions have been appealed and 3% have been overturned.
As part of on-going review and improvement of PIP, we are continuing to make efforts to ensure that all decisions, whether made initially or at Mandatory Reconsideration (MR), are the best informed decisions. For example, the department is running a series of trials which looks at the end to end PIP decision making process with a particular focus on MR and explores the different ways we can improve the quality of our decision making.
However, it is important that claimants can appeal their award decision if they are unhappy with it. Moreover, a request for an appeal does not mean that the decisions taken initially and as part of Mandatory Reconsideration were not right. Claimants often provide new, relevant evidence at the tribunal stage.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Urgent Question on 15 March 2017, Official Report, column 402, on personal independence payment assessments, how many people have scored points under descriptor f for psychiatric disorders alone for (a) new claims and (b) disability living allowance reassessments.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
We have interpreted your question to be requesting the number of people who have scored points under descriptor f for Mobility Activity 1 (Planning and Following Journeys).
The number of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments where the claimant had a Psychiatric Disorder and scored descriptor F for Mobility Activity 1 was:
New Claims: 12,160
Reassessments: 68,220
Figures include all PIP decisions between April 2013 and 28th February 2017.
Data is based on primary disabling condition as recorded on the PIP computer system. Claimants may often have multiple disabling conditions upon which the decision is based but only the primary condition is shown in these statistics.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans his Department has to extend the Access to Work programme to incorporate work experience and internships.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
The Access to Work scheme has already been extended to support self-arranged work experience and Supported Internships in line with guidance set out in paragraphs 123 – 140 which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/541858/access-to-work-staff-guide.pdf
This was announced by the then Minister for Disabled People, Esther McVey on 16 July 2013.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
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 extend the Access to Work programme so that disabled people have support plans in place before an employment offer.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
The Department has published an Access to Work pre-employment eligibility letter for individuals, their employers or potential employers in order to provide an indication of the help that people may be able to receive from the Access to Work scheme. This letter has been updated to include reference to both mental health support and coverage of apprentices, and can be found here. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/access-to-work-eligibility-letter-for-employees-and-employers
We are also promoting Access to Work and producing case studies to illustrate how the scheme can support people in a range of settings and how it makes a positive difference to disabled people’s working lives.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reason the universal credit regulations require that a claimant with a managed payment to landlord (MPtL) is unable to apply for a discretionary housing payment from their local authority while a MPtL is in place.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
DWP does not see any reason why Discretionary Housing Payments cannot be paid to Universal Credit claimants who have Managed Payments to their Landlord in place.
However, if a Local Authority decides not to accept an application for DHP on the grounds that a managed payment to the landlord is in place, guidance is clear that DWP can, in agreement with the claimant, remove that arrangement to allow the application to be made.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many claimants are in receipt of universal credit in Tower Hamlets.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
As of December 2016, the number of people claiming Universal Credit in Tower Hamlets, including both those in and not in receipt of a payment, was 2,000
This information is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/universal-credit-statistics.