Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will publish (a) staff turnover, (b) the number of new recruits and (c) the number of vacancies in her Department in each of the last three months.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
a) The annual turnover rate for DWP ending in the last three months is 7.0% in September, 6.8% in October and 6.6% in November. Annual end of year turnover rates are published in the DWP Annual Report and Accounts.
b) DWP has had 2,063 new recruits between 2 September 2024 and 30 November 2024.
c) DWP has advertised 170 recruitment campaigns for up to 2147 roles.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of not increasing Local Housing Allowance rates in 2025-26 on the number of households requiring temporary accommodation.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government recognises that homelessness levels are too high and there are a range of contributing factors. We will look carefully at these issues as we develop our strategy for ending homelessness.
When reviewing the Local Housing Allowance (LHA), the Secretary of State considered a range of factors, including the private rental situation, the Government’s goals and missions, and the wider fiscal context and engaged with MHCLG.
DWP currently spends around £30bn annually on housing support and the April 2024 increase to LHA costs approximately £7bn over 5 years.
For those who need further support, Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities. DHPs can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.
As announced at the Budget, funding for homelessness services is increasing next year by £233m compared to this year (2024/25). The increased spending will help to prevent rises in the number of families in temporary accommodation and help to prevent rough sleeping. This brings the total spend to nearly a billion pounds in 2025/26.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of surveys undertaken by the Food Foundation Food entitled Food insecurity tracking, published in July 2024, on a potential link between ethnicity and food insecurity.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
We are committed to tackling poverty in all its forms and this includes tackling food insecurity by reducing mass dependence on emergency food parcels. Good work can significantly reduce the chances of people failing into poverty so will be the foundation of our approach.
The Child Poverty Taskforce has started urgent work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy in Spring 2025. We will harness all available levers across government to bring about an enduring reduction in child poverty in this parliament, as part of a 10-year strategy for lasting change.
Our jobcentres support our customers, including in ethnic minority groups, to move into employment by providing access to mainstream services and bespoke programmes that are designed to be flexible to individual needs. We are also taking targeted action in 20 places with a high ethnic minority employment gap. The Get Britain Working White Paper, to be set out in the Autumn, will develop measures to reduce inactivity and help people to find better paid and more secure jobs.
Alongside this, we have committed to reviewing Universal Credit by listening to the full range of views on potential changes, so that our social security system is fit for purpose. As announced in the Autumn Budget, a new Fair Repayment Rate will be introduced from April 2025, reducing Universal Credit deductions overall cap from 25% to 15%. This measure will help approximately 1.2 million of the poorest households benefit by an average of £420 a year.
We also announced that, £1 billion, including Barnett impact, will be invested to extend the Household Support Fund in England by a full year until 31 March 2026, on top of the six months already announced, and to maintain Discretionary Housing Payments in England and Wales.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the child poverty taskforce plans to make an assessment of the potential impact of furniture poverty on families in social rented homes.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Child Poverty Taskforce has started urgent work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy in Spring and will explore all available levers to drive forward short and long-term actions across government to reduce child poverty. The taskforce is exploring a range of metrics and will make decisions alongside the publication of the strategy in Spring 2025.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the end of the Household Support Fund on the number of people in poverty.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
No assessment has been made of the impact of the Household Support Fund on poverty.
The Government announced funding to extend the Household Support Fund for a further 6 months, from 1 October 2024 until 31 March 2025.
An additional £421 million has been provided to enable the extension of the Household Support Fund in England, plus funding for the Devolved Governments through the Barnett formula to be spent at their discretion, as usual. The objective of the Household Support Fund is to provide crisis support to vulnerable households in England in most need with the cost of essentials such as food and energy.
The Household Support Fund is intended to cover a wide range of low-income households in need, including households with children of all ages, pensioners, unpaid carers, care leavers and disabled people, larger households, single-person households, and those struggling with one-off financial shocks or unforeseen events.
Local Authorities have the discretion to design their own local schemes within the parameters of the guidance and grant determination that the Department for Work and Pensions have set out for the fund. This is because they have the ties and the knowledge to best determine how support should be provided in their local communities.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will publish her Department's assessment of the compatibility of its policy to introduce means-testing for the Winter Fuel Payment with the Public Sector Equality Duty as set out in the Equality Act 2010.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
An equality analysis was produced as part of Ministerial decision making in line with the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty.
This was published on 13 September and can be found online here: DWP Freedom of Information response - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
By convention, such analyses are not published alongside secondary legislation. However, in view of the close public interest in this issue Ministers decided, exceptionally, to publish in this case.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of personal independence payment appeals resulted in the decision being (a) lapsed and (b) overturned at tribunal hearing in each of the last five years.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The tables below provide information on the number of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) appeal clearances; and whether they were lapsed or overturned at a tribunal hearing.
Data provided is for the last five financial years.
Table 1: Number of appeals cleared for each financial year and how many were subsequently lapsed or overturned at a tribunal hearing
Financial Year | Appeals Cleared | Appeals Lapsed | Appeals Overturned |
2019-20 | 99,800 | 27,100 | 53,700 |
2020-21 | 77,000 | 26,300 | 37,000 |
2021-22 | 48,300 | 17,100 | 20,500 |
2022-23 | 65,300 | 19,000 | 30,500 |
2023-24 | 77,700 | 25,600 | 34,400 |
Table 2: Proportion of lapsed or overturned appeals for each financial year
Financial Year | Appeals Lapsed (%) | Appeals Overturned (%) |
2019-20 | 27 | 54 |
2020-21 | 34 | 48 |
2021-22 | 35 | 42 |
2022-23 | 29 | 47 |
2023-24 | 33 | 44 |
Notes:
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to Tables 5Aii and 6Aii in the official statistics entitled Personal Independence Payment: Official Statistics to July 2024, published on 17 September 2024, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of the quality of personal independence payment decisions, in the context of the proportion of appeals which are lapsed or overturned at a tribunal hearing.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It is our aim to make the right decision as early as possible in the process. To support this we have made improvements to our decision-making processes, giving Decision Makers additional time to proactively contact customers if they think additional evidence may support the claim.
We will continue to learn from decisions overturned at appeal, for example we regularly gather feedback from Presenting Officers who attend tribunal.
Further, the Health Transformation Programme is transforming health and disability benefit services over the longer term to improve the claimant experience, and improve trust in our services and decisions. It is creating a new customer-focussed Health Assessment Service and transforming the entire PIP service, from finding out about benefits and eligibility through to decisions and payments.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
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 whose personal independence payment appeals resulted in the decision being (a) lapsed and (b) overturned at tribunal hearing had their decision changed from no award to an award of both the daily living and mobility components at the enhanced rate in each of the last five years.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The table below provides information on the total number of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) appeals, which were either lapsed or overturned at a tribunal hearing. It also includes the number of claimants who had no award prior to the appeal, and had their award changed to Enhanced for both daily living and mobility components post lapsed or overturned appeal. Data provided is for the last five financial years.
Table 1: Number of lapsed and overturned appeals for each financial year and how many subsequently went from nil to enhanced on both daily living and mobility components
Financial Year | Total Appeals Lapsed | Total Appeals Overturned | Appeals Lapsed (Nil award to enhanced-enhanced) | Appeals Overturned (Nil award to enhanced-enhanced) |
2019-20 | 27,100 | 53,700 | 2,900 | 5,100 |
2020-21 | 26,300 | 37,000 | 3,300 | 4,000 |
2021-22 | 17,100 | 20,500 | 1,900 | 2,200 |
2022-23 | 19,000 | 30,500 | 1,900 | 3,800 |
2023-24 | 25,600 | 34,400 | 2,100 | 4,900 |
The table below provides information on the proportion of PIP appeals which were either lapsed or overturned at a tribunal hearing, that previously had no award but had their award changed to enhanced for the daily living and mobility component post appeal. Data is provided for the last five financial years.
Table 2: Proportion of lapsed and overturned appeals whose award changed from nil to enhanced for each financial year
Financial Year | Appeals Lapsed (Nil award to enhanced-enhanced) (%) | Appeals Overturned (Nil award to enhanced-enhanced) (%) |
2019-20 | 11 | 9 |
2020-21 | 12 | 11 |
2021-22 | 11 | 11 |
2022-23 | 10 | 12 |
2023-24 | 8 | 14 |
Notes:
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman entitled Women’s State Pension age: our findings on injustice and associated issues, published on 21 March 2024, HC 638, whether her Department has made an estimate of the number of women born in the 1950s who have been affected by the State Pension age changes considered in that report.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report published on 21 March 2024 considers the communication to 1950s born women of the equalisation and increase of the State Pension age introduced by the Pensions Acts of 1995, 2007 and 2011. The Acts (collectively) increased the State Pension age for all women born after 5 April 1950. Based on current ONS figures it is estimated that there are around 3.5 million women who saw an increase in their State Pension age and were born in the 1950s.