Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Pension Credit claimants reached State Pension age (a) in and (b) since April 2016.
Answered by Paul Maynard
Latest published statistics show there were 1.38m Pension Credit claimants at May-23. 1,440 of these reached State Pension age (SPa) in April 2016, with a further 196,520 having reached SPa since April 2016.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when he plans to publish his Department's response to the Options for Defined Benefit Scheme: call for evidence which closed in September 2023.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The government response to ‘Options for Defined Benefit schemes: a call for evidence’ was published on 22 November 2023. Please see the link to our response at Government response to Options for Defined Benefit schemes - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of people claiming Pension Credit were born on or after April 2016.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
Pension Credit is only available to those of State Pension age. Therefore the number and proportion of people claiming Pension Credit who were born on or after April 2016, is zero. They are, at most, seven years old.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to confirm what the average answering time is on the Pension Service Helpline.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The table below shows data from the Pension Service lines, Pension Credit and State Pension. The metrics include Average Speed to Answer as requested for the last complete calendar month.
Date | Product Line | Average Speed to Answer (hh:mm:ss) |
Aug-23 | Pension Credit | 0:06:08 |
Aug-23 | State Pension | 0:03:08 |
|
|
|
| Average | 0:04:22 |
Please note this information is derived from the Department’s management information designed solely for the purpose of helping the Department to manage its business. As such, it has not been subjected to the rigorous quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics. As DWP holds the information internally, we have released it. However, it is possible information held by DWP may change due to operational reasons and we recommend that caution be applied when using it.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an estimate of the number of families in Ellesmere Port and Neston constituency subject to the two child benefit limit.
Answered by Guy Opperman
310 Universal Credit households.
Notes:
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reason his Department set the assessment period for the first cost of living payment for 2023 from 26 January 2023 to 25 February 2023.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The qualifying date is as close to the payment date as possible so that only those who have recently received an eligible means-tested benefit receive a Cost of Living Payment
This means that claimants who received a nil award during the qualifying period would not be entitled to a Cost of Living Payment. Most nil awards will be as a result of increased earnings.
Paying those with financial resources available, which would make them ineligible for means-tested benefits, is not the intention of the Cost of Living Payments which are aimed at those on the lowest incomes.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 9 May 2023 to Question 183091 on Children: Maintenance, what the average waiting time is between an application to the court and outcome; and whether his Department has set a target on the proportion of applications that result in an outcome.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The Child Maintenance Service has an expectation of a successful outcome in every case we send to the court.
The average clearance between an application to the court and outcome is 16 weeks.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department has made a recent impact assessment on the payment of childcare costs through Universal Credit.
Answered by Guy Opperman
No such assessment has been made.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many mandatory investigations the Health and Safety Executive ended as a result of inadequate resources in each of the last five years.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) selects cases for investigation on the basis of its published incident selection criteria (ISC) – incidents which notionally meet the criteria may not be selected for investigation or, where selected, investigations may conclude early for a number of reasons, including decisions around the most efficient deployment of resources. HSE does not hold specific figures relating to investigations falling within in its ISC which were concluded due to inadequate resources.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the capability of the Health and Safety Executive to investigate incidents that are deemed to meet the conditions for a mandatory investigation.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Britain continues to be one of the safest places to work in the world.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) carries out planned inspection activity as well as investigating incidents. HSE has discretion as to what incidents it investigates and follows the principles laid out in Sections 6 and 11 in its Enforcement Policy Statement (EPS).
HSE’s published Incident Selection Criteria (ISC) gives guidance on matters that would normally be investigated, however there are a number of reasons why incidents meeting the ISC would not be investigated. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has discretion as to the matters it investigates, as such there are no mandatory investigations.
Where HSE decides not to investigate matters that are within the criteria, due to competing demands for resources, this is because they are deploying resources as efficiently and effectively as possible. Some investigations are unlikely to lead to further action so resource is better spent on proactive inspection work to prevent incidents happening in the first place.
HSE have appropriately trained and experienced inspectors, specialist inspectors and other regulatory staff who can carry out investigations in line with HSE’s policies and procedures, as required.
For 2022 / 2023, provisional figures show that 16,500 proactive inspections were carried out by HSE (against a target of 14,000) and were delivered through a mixture of high-risk programmes and campaigns, assurance and priority local visits. During this same period, 85% of fatal investigations were completed within 12 months of assuming primacy from the police (against a target of 80%) and 95% of non-fatal investigations completed within 12 months of the incident (against a target of 90%). This demonstrates HSE has appropriate measures in place to investigate incidents while also completing proactive inspection activity.