Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much the Pensions Regulator has spent on equipment to enable staff to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Pensions Regulator spent £16,109 in 2022/23, £7,711 in 2023/24 and £6,056 in 2024/25 on equipment including desktop monitor, keyboard, laptop riser and mouse to enable those of its staff who required it to work from home.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much the Money and Pensions Service has spent on equipment to enable staff to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) has contributed the following for homeworking equipment in each of the last three years: £59,658 in 2022/23, £103,604 in 2023/24, and £61,087 in 2024/25.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
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 disability employment gap in Lincolnshire.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The disability employment gap is monitored and published in the official statistics release The employment of disabled people 2024 - GOV.UK in data tables LMS008, LMS009 and LMS010. This includes statistics on the local authority areas Lincolnshire.
The disability employment gap for 2023/24 was 24.7 percentage points in Lincolnshire. This compares to the UK wide disability employment gap of 27.2 percentage points for 2023/24. This is the latest period for which reliable data is available.
Estimates below national level are based on smaller sample sizes and should therefore be used with caution.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much the Pension Protection Fund has spent on equipment to enable staff to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
Over the period from 22/23 to 24/25, PPF spend on equipment to enable staff to work from home has been minimal (less than £1.5k over the period).
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much the Pensions Ombudsman has spent on equipment to enable staff to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Pensions Ombudsman operates a hybrid working model. Therefore, the provision of equipment for staff to use when working at home is made in line with Health and Safety legislation and workplace adjustment requirements.
Over the last three years, the following has been contributed to support staff on the days they are not working in the office: £6,868 in in 2022/23, £6,289 in 2023/24 and £2,243 in 2024/25.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what machine learning models her Department has used to help tackle fraud in the last three years.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP uses Machine Learning as an analytical tool in the prevention and detection of fraud and error. There is currently one fraud and error machine learning model in full deployment and others at various stages of development, testing and implementation, focused on the highest areas of loss.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much the Health and Safety Executive has spent on equipment to enable staff to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
HSE spend on equipment to enable staff to work from home in each of the last three years is shown in the table below.
| 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 |
HSE Equipment Spend (inclusive of VAT) | £329,011 | £308,537 | £317,551 |
Note – the cost mainly relates to provision of equipment for new starters and HSE has increased its staff numbers in this period mainly due to becoming the Building Safety Regulator.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time is to process a Personal Independence Payment appeal in South Holland and the Deepings constituency.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The average time to process a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) appeal for all PIP appeals in the South Holland and The Deepings constituency, since PIP was introduced, can be found in table 1 below.
Table 1: The mean and median time to process an appeal from time of registration to the time of appeal clearance in weeks
Mean appeal processing time (weeks) | Median appeal processing time (weeks) |
23 | 19 |
Source: PIP Administrative data
Notes:
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps she has taken to promote timebanking in job centres.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Our Get Britain Working plan aims to reduce economic inactivity levels and take the first steps to delivering our long-term ambition to achieve an 80% employment rate. We want to ensure that everyone has the opportunities they need to achieve and thrive, to succeed and flourish. Support includes identifying skills gaps and referral to skills training, careers advice, job search support, and volunteering opportunities. Work Coaches will work with customer to identify transferable skills relevant to the opportunities available. Our Employer and Partnership Teams work with employers and partners to bring vacancies and provisions closer to our customers.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
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 equipment for civil servants to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We are unable to provide this information without incurring disproportionate costs.