Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton)
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 effect of recent changes in welfare provision on the number of children living in poverty in Oldham West and Royton constituency.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
National statistics on the number of children in relative low income are set out in the annual "Households Below Average Income" publication. The number and proportion of children in relative low income is not available at local authority or constituency level in this publication because the survey sample sizes are too small to support the production of robust estimates at this geography.
Latest 3-year estimates for the North West of the proportion and number of children in low income are available in Table 4.16ts and Table 4.17ts in the file “4_children_timeseries_risk” from this link:
Impact Assessments of policies in the Welfare Reform and Work Act of 2016 were published in 2015. Evidence shows work is the best route out of poverty; nearly three-quarters of children from workless families moved out of poverty when their parents entered into full-time work. Children in workless households are five time more likely to be in poverty than those in households where all adults were working. Welfare reforms are designed to incentivise parents to make the choice to move into and progress in work.
This Government is committed to action that tackles the root causes of poverty and disadvantage with policies that incentivise employment as the best route out of poverty. In Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families, we set out a framework for a continued focus on improving children’s long-term outcomes. This includes nine national indicators to track progress in tackling the disadvantages that affect families and children. Four of these measures are set out in primary legislation which places a duty on the Government report annually to Parliament on the parental worklessness and educational attainment indicators. Data on the non-statutory indicators will also be published each year.
Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 19 December to Question 118690, on Universal Credit: Telephone Services, what the evidential basis is to support the position that people abandoned calls to use the online service; what the cost to the public purse was of abandoned calls in each month since September 2016; and what the average length of abandoned calls was in that time period.
Answered by Damian Hinds
Universal Credit Full Service is a digital service designed to enable customers to manage their own data and account online at a time which is convenient for them. As well as giving them access to online statements for payment information, and their journal for interacting with their dedicated Case Manager and Work Coach, customers are able to report changes online when they would previously have called us.
We do not currently hold any management information that specifically correlates abandoned calls to use of online services. However, as of November 2017, the percentage of customers claiming online is over 95%, and those reporting changes online is now over 80%. This type of channel shift is helping reduce the calls we receive as a percentage of the caseload: Universal Credit Full Service calls per claim ratio has decreased from 2.7 in April 2016 to 1.0 by the end of October 2017.
There was no cost to the public purse for abandoned calls as this forms part of the contract we have with BT, and following the introduction of the free phone numbers to Universal Credit helplines in November 2017 there will no longer be a cost to the customer.
Between September 2016 and October 2017 the average length of time before a call was voluntarily abandoned by the Universal Credit Full Service customer was 5 minutes 19 seconds.
Notes –
1) 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.
2) Data is not yet available for November 2017.
Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many calls made to the universal credit helpline in each month from September 2016 to date were abandoned.
Answered by Damian Hinds
The numbers of calls received and abandoned are set out in the table below.
| Calls received | Of which, calls abandoned |
September 2016 | 752931 | 107647 |
October 2016 | 672617 | 74729 |
November 2016 | 707690 | 91348 |
December 2016 | 607582 | 60856 |
January 2017 | 860875 | 105893 |
February 2017 | 779433 | 102557 |
March 2017 | 894979 | 84618 |
April 2017 | 692843 | 51493 |
May 2017 | 751837 | 55915 |
June 2017 | 763052 | 96626 |
July 2017 | 754367 | 99094 |
August 2017 | 790936 | 124427 |
September 2017 | 780989 | 121939 |
October 2017 | 849779 | 123556 |
The ratio of calls relative to caseload has fallen from 1.8 calls relative to caseload in September 2016 to 1.3 calls per case in October 2017. That reflects our success in encouraging claimants to deal with us on-line. The numbers of calls abandoned reflects that also claimants call and realise, through our messaging that they can deal with their enquiry on-line and do not need to continue with their call.