Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much of the Discretionary Housing Payment budget for 2022/23 has been spent.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Local authorities (LAs) administer the Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) scheme.
The latest DHP expenditure data held by DWP covers Quarter 1 (Q1) of financial year 2022-23 and is taken from voluntary expenditure returns from 253 out of 331, or 76%, of LAs in England and Wales.
This data indicates that those LAs who provided a return have spent 27% of their overall DHP budget in the first quarter of 2022-23.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people with long covid have been awarded the Personal Independence Payment (a) daily living standard, (b) daily living enhanced, (c) mobility standard and (d) mobility enhanced rate since March 2021.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The latest available data on Personal Independence Payment (PIP) decisions split by type of decision (i.e. whether the claim was awarded, disallowed or withdrawn), main disabling condition, and Daily Living and Mobility award, can be found on Stat-Xplore.
The relevant categorisation is ‘Coronavirus Covid-19' and can be found under the disability subcategory ‘Viral diseases’ which is under the main disability category of ‘Infectious disease’.
Data is based on primary disabling condition as recorded on the PIP computer systems. Claimants may often have multiple disabling conditions upon which the decision is based but only the primary condition is available for statistical purposes and shown in these statistics. Therefore there may be other claimants where the ongoing impact of a Covid infection has influenced the award of PIP.
Guidance on how to use Stat-Xplore can be found here.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions he has had with Local Authorities on the Government's decision to cut the Discretionary Housing Payment budget from £140 million in 2021/22 to £100 million for 2022/23.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has not met Local Authorities (LAs) to discuss Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP) funding for 2022/23.
Officials at the Department for Work and Pensions engage with LAs through regular forums, and those LAs were informed of a reduction in funding prior to the publication of the full allocations for 2022/23.
LAs are notified annually of the total amount of DHP funding and how much funding has been allocated to each LA.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Committee of Public Accounts ninth report on Child Maintenance, published on 22 June 2022, HC 255, if she will undertake a review of the child maintenance system and how it interacts with (a) wider welfare and (b) separated families policies.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department is carefully considering the Committee’s recommendations and will respond in due course.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average processing time is for applications to the International Pensions Centre.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Average Actual Clearance Time for a new State Pension Claim to International Pension Centre for the 2021/22 Financial Year was 108 days.
Source: Output from Pension Strategy Computer System (PSCS)
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average processing time is for applications to the Pension Widows Department.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Average Actual Clearance Time for a claim to Bereavement Support Payment for the 3 months of the 2022/23 Financial Year was, April 22 14 days, May 22 13 days and June 22 14 days.
Source: Output from Bereavement Support Payment Claims Manager Tool.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will publish a breakdown of the reasons for Universal Credit deductions to awards for claimants.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Below are the liabilities or debts for which a Universal Credit deduction can be made:
Deduction Type |
Benefit Transfer Advance |
Budgeting Advance |
Change of Circumstances Advance |
New Claim Advance |
DWP Benefit Fraud Overpayments |
DWP Benefit Overpayments |
DWP Recoverable Hardship Payments |
Housing Benefit and DWP Administrative Penalties |
Housing Benefit and DWP Civil Penalties |
Housing Benefit Fraud Overpayment |
Housing Benefit Overpayment |
Social Fund Loans |
Tax Credit Overpayments |
Child Maintenance |
Council Tax Arrears |
Electricity Arrears |
Electricity Ongoing Consumption |
Eligible Loan Arrears |
Fines |
Gas Arrears |
Gas Ongoing Consumption |
Home Office Integration Loan Arrears |
Rent or Service Charge Arrears |
Water Arrears |
Water Ongoing Consumption |
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made a recent assessment of the level of risk of incorrect child maintenance calculations being made as a result of fraudulent informal arrangements relating to other children.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Child Maintenance Group keeps the risk of fraud within its business under review, and any cases [where it seems likely fraud has occurred] are investigated. Where fraud is found in informal arrangements relating to other children, the investigation staff may support a new maintenance assessment or use other criminal powers as necessary.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps her Department has taken to help ensure accuracy in the payment of benefits.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
DWP takes significant steps to ensure the accuracy of benefit payments. Our Enhanced Checking Service, a team of trained fraud specialists, look at suspicious cases referred to them by benefit processing staff, which helps prevent fraud from occurring at the outset of a claim. Our Integrated Risk & Intelligence Service (IRIS) detects and prevents emerging frauds, which allows our various Disrupt Teams to respond to threats.
We revisited over 900,000 Universal Credit (UC) claims paid under ‘Trust and Protect’ procedures during the early days of the pandemic. Additionally, building on what we have learnt during the pandemic, we are currently creating a dedicated team to deliver targeted case reviews of existing Universal Credit claims. We are expecting to review over 2 million cases over the next 5 years, stopping around £2 billion of losses due to fraud and error over that period.
We increasingly draw on data to help inform benefit payments and the use of HMRC’s Real Time Information has almost eradicated PAYE earnings fraud in UC. We have extended this principle across a range of legacy benefits by way of our Verify Earnings and Pensions (VEP) service.
The Department maintains rigorous control of Official Error via its Quality Assurance
Framework, which provides assurance that the necessary quality controls are in place.
An Independent Quality and Assurance Team checks transactions conducted within DWP benefits and this insight informs training requirements, infrastructure improvements and risk management. A senior stakeholder group, comprising of Directors, oversees the quality agenda.
UC Official Error overpayments have fallen in each of the last 3 years, from 2.1% of UC expenditure in 2018/19 to 0.7% in 2021/22.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment her Department has made of the (a) effectiveness and (b) impact on claimants of the requirement for all overpayments to be collected from Universal Credit claimants in the context of the proportion of claimants who are having a collection for an overpayment applied.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
DWP has a responsibility to the taxpayer to recover any monies overpaid to benefit claimants and to do so in the most efficient way possible. Last year, working with Local Authorities, we recovered £1.0 billion of overpaid benefit.
Recovery from benefit remains the most efficient source of recovery, with 90% of debt recovered this way in 2021-22. However, we recognise the importance of safeguarding the welfare of claimants who have incurred debt and legislation protects claimants from excessive deductions. This means there are limits set for individual deductions. In Universal Credit the overall deduction cap is set at 25% of the standard allowance, having been reduced from 40%.
Additionally, any deductions from benefit are prioritised which means that 3rd party deductions to help pay utility or rent arrears (for example) take precedence over overpayment recovery deductions.
Anyone experiencing hardship with repayments is encouraged to contact DWP Debt
Management to negotiate a reduction in their rate of repayment, or a temporary suspension of repayment, depending on financial circumstances.
We remain an active participant in Breathing Space, launched in May 2021 as part of The Debt Respite Scheme to support debtors struggling to cope with problem debt. We also signpost customers to trusted partners, who can provide impartial money and debt advice.