Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what purposes their Department has used artificial intelligence in the last year.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is included in the Government’s plan to support economic growth, change public service delivery, and influence living standards for people across the country.
In the last year the Department for Work and Pensions have utilised AI to support them in delivering better outcomes for customers. This includes the use of AI to increase colleague productivity, improve back-office operations and processes, and to tackle fraud and error.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to ensure compliance with benefit eligibility rules by foreign nationals.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department applies strict compliance and benefit eligibility checks to all claimants regardless of their nationality. In addition to verifying a claimant’s identity, DWP checks that claimants are habitually resident here before they can receive public funds benefits including Universal Credit. DWP also applies strict past presence requirements to ensure that claimants of disability and carer benefits have a substantial and recent connection to this country before they can claim. In addition, DWP always checks a person’s immigration status before paying them benefits if they are a foreign national. We verify this information with the Home Office, including through automatic system-to-system checks.
This Government takes all cases of fraud seriously and has introduced the biggest package of measures in recent history to reduce welfare fraud, error and debt, which includes new legislation, the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill. This contains new powers to modernise our defences and is currently progressing through Parliament.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 merits of reforming the (a) structure or (b) allocation of the welfare budget.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government is committed to a social security system which raises employment and living standards by supporting and incentivising people into work and to work more, reduces poverty by supporting people at times of higher cost and dependency, and promotes fairness and controls overall spending to ensure the long-term sustainability of the system for future generations. The Government’s welfare cap rule also helps ensure the long-term sustainability of the welfare system. A new welfare cap covering the current parliament was introduced at Autumn Budget 2024.
The financial sustainability of the benefit system is considered in the round as part of the forecasts for annually managed expenditure which are produced twice yearly as part of the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast process.
At Spring Statement 2025 the OBR forecast that expenditure on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from £75.8billion in 2025/26 to £88.9billion in 2029/30 – with Universal Credit expenditure representing a similar share of GDP in 2029/30 as in 2025/26. The number of households on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from 6.3million in 2025/26 to 6.8million over that time period. The OBR will provide a further update as part of the Autumn Budget.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 potential impact of the increasing number of people receiving Universal Credit to the British taxpayer.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government is committed to a social security system which raises employment and living standards by supporting and incentivising people into work and to work more, reduces poverty by supporting people at times of higher cost and dependency, and promotes fairness and controls overall spending to ensure the long-term sustainability of the system for future generations. The Government’s welfare cap rule also helps ensure the long-term sustainability of the welfare system. A new welfare cap covering the current parliament was introduced at Autumn Budget 2024.
The financial sustainability of the benefit system is considered in the round as part of the forecasts for annually managed expenditure which are produced twice yearly as part of the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast process.
At Spring Statement 2025 the OBR forecast that expenditure on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from £75.8billion in 2025/26 to £88.9billion in 2029/30 – with Universal Credit expenditure representing a similar share of GDP in 2029/30 as in 2025/26. The number of households on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from 6.3million in 2025/26 to 6.8million over that time period. The OBR will provide a further update as part of the Autumn Budget.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 potential impact of Universal Credit expenditure on the sustainability of the overall welfare budget.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government is committed to a social security system which raises employment and living standards by supporting and incentivising people into work and to work more, reduces poverty by supporting people at times of higher cost and dependency, and promotes fairness and controls overall spending to ensure the long-term sustainability of the system for future generations. The Government’s welfare cap rule also helps ensure the long-term sustainability of the welfare system. A new welfare cap covering the current parliament was introduced at Autumn Budget 2024.
The financial sustainability of the benefit system is considered in the round as part of the forecasts for annually managed expenditure which are produced twice yearly as part of the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast process.
At Spring Statement 2025 the OBR forecast that expenditure on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from £75.8billion in 2025/26 to £88.9billion in 2029/30 – with Universal Credit expenditure representing a similar share of GDP in 2029/30 as in 2025/26. The number of households on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from 6.3million in 2025/26 to 6.8million over that time period. The OBR will provide a further update as part of the Autumn Budget.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the long term financial sustainability of the number of people on Universal Credit.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government is committed to a social security system which raises employment and living standards by supporting and incentivising people into work and to work more, reduces poverty by supporting people at times of higher cost and dependency, and promotes fairness and controls overall spending to ensure the long-term sustainability of the system for future generations. The Government’s welfare cap rule also helps ensure the long-term sustainability of the welfare system. A new welfare cap covering the current parliament was introduced at Autumn Budget 2024.
The financial sustainability of the benefit system is considered in the round as part of the forecasts for annually managed expenditure which are produced twice yearly as part of the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast process.
At Spring Statement 2025 the OBR forecast that expenditure on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from £75.8billion in 2025/26 to £88.9billion in 2029/30 – with Universal Credit expenditure representing a similar share of GDP in 2029/30 as in 2025/26. The number of households on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from 6.3million in 2025/26 to 6.8million over that time period. The OBR will provide a further update as part of the Autumn Budget.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 adequacy of the Work Capability Assessment.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As we outlined in our Pathways to Work Green Paper, we are scrapping the controversial Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to end the dysfunctional process which drives people into dependency, delivering on the Government’s commitment to reform or replace it, and removing the ‘can or can’t work flaw’ at the heart of our social security system.
Going through the WCA is complex, time consuming and stressful for customers, especially if they also have to go through the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) process. Therefore, it is right that we move to one assessment and do not put millions of people through two, similar and lengthy functional assessments.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to (a) make work pay and (b) stop long term dependency on Universal Credit.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Through our Make Work Pay reforms – and the increases we made in April to the National Living and Minimum Wages – we are working to put more money into the pockets of working people and ensure that work remains a reliable route to financial security.
Our Universal Credit Bill also tackles the perverse incentives in the UC system that drive people into dependency by rebalancing the core payment and health top up to better encourage those who can work to enter or return to employment.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of economic inactivity rates amongst (a) foreign and (b) UK nationals.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The latest inactivity rates for UK and non-UK nationals are published and available at:
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 trends in the level of regional differences in economic inactivity rates by (a) gender, (b) age, (c) ethnicity and (d) religion.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
(a)(b)(c): The information requested is published and available at:
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/default.asp
Guidance for users can be found at:
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/home/newuser.asp
(d): The most recent data is published and available at: Economic activity status by religion - Office for National Statistics