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 23 October 2017 to Question 109193, where the £500 million in investment in IT has been spent; how that amount compares with the original estimate the Government was given from the providers and on which contracts were signed; and whether there are penalties under those contracts for any overspend.
Answered by Damian Hinds
To provide the requested information would incur disproportionate cost.
However, some information about contracts worth over £10,000 with the government and its agencies are available at: https://www.gov.uk/contracts-finder.
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 people were charged with benefit fraud in each year from 2010 to date; and how many of those people served a custodial sentence as a result of that benefit fraud.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Counter Fraud and Compliance Directorate (CFCD), part of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for the prevention, detection and where appropriate, investigation of Fraud and Error against all benefits administered by and on behalf of DWP.
DWP does not hold these data requested. However, Ministry of Justice has said The number of defendants proceeded against for benefit fraud offences and offenders sentenced to immediate custody for these offences in England and Wales 2010 – 2016 can be found by going to the ‘outcomes by offence’ tool at –
and selecting the following offences from the Offence filter:
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 the rate of child poverty has been in each year from 2010 to 2017; and what the rate of child poverty is forecast to be in each year from 2018 to 2020.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Estimates of the child poverty rate since 2010 are published annually in Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data tables.
These are publicly available in the link shown (see file “4_children_trends.ods” and tabs 4.1tr and 4.2tr).
We do not forecast rates of low income. Statistics on the proportion and number of children living in households in low income in 2016/17 have been pre-announced and will be published in the Households Below Average Income release by the end of March 2018. The government is committed to continue publishing this series on an annual basis.
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 recent estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse to date of the IT system supporting universal credit.
Answered by Damian Hinds
The overall investment cost forecast for Universal Credit development reduced to £1.7 billion in the Outline Business Case (OBC) from an earlier forecast of £2.4bn; demonstrating the on-going cost control focus of the Programme. As part of that overall investment cost the Programme has spent around £500m of investment in IT related expenditure up to September 2017 to support the delivery of Universal Credit.
Our latest estimate of the whole life costs, the costs of investment plus the costs of running the system every year from 2015/16 to 2024/25 is £13.6bn, a reduction of £2.4bn from the previous estimate.
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, (a) how many claimants are currently in receipt of universal credit and (b) what estimate he has made of the number of such claimants once the roll-out of universal credit has been completed in each of the 10 local authority areas in Greater Manchester.
Answered by Damian Hinds
(a) The latest figures are available in the Official Universal Credit Statistics at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/universal-credit-29-apr-2013-to-14-sep-2017
(b) The information is not currently available
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, if it will publish the risk register for the roll-out of universal credit.
Answered by Damian Hinds
It is not Government’s policy to publish documents of this nature.
The Universal Credit programme is already subject to a robust regime of internal and external scrutiny, including oversight from the Work and Pensions Select Committee, the Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority.