Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the operational hours are of the Child Maintenance Service's call centres; and if she will publish those operational hours on the Child Maintenance Service's website.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Operational hours for Child Maintenance Service are 08:00 to 19:30 Monday to Friday and 09:00 to 16:30 on Saturday. However we also have a self service portal which is available 24 hours a day
https://childmaintenanceservice.direct.gov.uk/public/
In addition we share the opening time with customers through our automated telephony messages and during Child Maintenance Options and Child Maintenance application conversations.
We will give consideration to having these published on the CMS Direct.gov website, in line with other operational priorities.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps have been taken to ensure that service users are able to access the Child Maintenance Service in a timely manner.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
New customers access the Child Maintenance Service by telephone contact whilst existing customers have a choice of telephony or self-service for a number of transactions. Every six months we formally review the numbers of people working at key points during our operating hours to ensure we have the right number of people available to answer customer calls, and our most recent review was completed at the beginning on June. This is in line with the approach taken for all services provided by DWP. As you would expect we undertake periodic upgrades to our systems but endeavour to keep customer impact to a minimum and ensure that they have adequate notice. Lastly, occasionally, the Child Maintenance Service is subject to unplanned system down time we have robust internal processes in place to minimise the period of disruption.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many calls were made to the Child Maintenance Service telephone line in each of the last three years.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
This information is not published externally however is collated internally and has been provided for context only.
CMS inbound number 0800 171 2345 | Calls Offered |
15/16 | 1,546,005 |
16/17 | 2,440,004 |
17/18 | 2,873,130 |
CMG publish data externally with regards to the current CMS caseload which adds context to the volume of calls received. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-aug-2013-to-mar-2018-experimental Call volumes are increasing at a lower rate than the CMS caseload.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
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 adequacy of the service provided by the Child Maintenance Service telephone line.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Performance of the telephony service is regularly reviewed. Information regarding the proportion of calls answered and within a set timescale is published as part of the CMS experimental publications:
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment has been made of the adequacy of staffing levels in the Child Maintenance Service and their capacity to deal with the volume of their work.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The numbers of people working within the Child Maintenance Service is reviewed regularly to ensure we have sufficient resources to answer customer calls and progress cases. So far in 2018, we have recruited 210 people into the Child Maintenance Service, with these people joining us between February 2018 and June 2018, and we are currently undertaking recruitment for a further 300 people to join the Child Maintenance Service during July and August. We will continue to review the volumes of work against our forecasting model to ensure that we adjust staffing levels as required.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many staff have been employed in Child Maintenance Service call centres in each of the last three years.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
All the people employed by the Child Maintenance Service are responsible for answering customer calls. The numbers of people who have been employed are as follows:
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what charge is made to the service user for calling the Child Maintenance Service telephone line.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
We have recently introduced 0800 telephone numbers for all our Child Maintenance Service lines, which are all free for customers to call from landline telephones. Call costs from mobile phone providers will vary depending on the customer’s provider and service plan, and in some cases, the time of day the call is made.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people aged between 16 and 24 in Wales have been in receipt of Job Seeker’s Allowance in each of the last five years; and if she will provide that same data by region.
Answered by Alok Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
The Department already publishes this data on the Nomis website and it can be accessed on the Jobseeker’s Allowance age and duration page at: www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/construct/summary.asp?mode=construct&version=0&dataset=4
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many women in (a) Dwyfor Meirionnydd, (b) Wales and (c) the UK will not receive the new state pension as a result of failing to meet the National Insurance Contributions threshold.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The new State Pension (nSP) was introduced for people reaching State Pension age from 6th April 2016 onwards. To qualify, people usually need to have a minimum of ten years on their National Insurance record when they reach State Pension age. Our latest data on the number of qualifying years people have are for the 2015/16 financial year, so we do not yet have any data on the numbers of people reaching State Pension age under the new State Pension with less than 10 years of National Insurance contributions.
Our analysis published in January 2016 forecast that around 2% of women in Great Britain reaching State Pension age by 2020 would have less than 10 qualifying years. Subject to qualification, Pension Credit may be available for people who are not eligible for the new State Pension.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what guidance his Department has issued on the effect of pension clauses.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Information on the number of pensioners who have had a reduction to the size of pension pay-outs is not collated centrally and could only be provided at a disproportionate cost.
This private arrangement is a feature of what are sometimes called integrated pension schemes. These schemes were designed to avoid additional contributions from sponsors and members by taking account of some or all of the State Pension when calculating the amount of occupational pension payable. The arrangement is set out in scheme rules which would have been available to members when they joined the scheme.
Such arrangements are not a Department for Work and Pensions matter. There are no plans to legislate to compel schemes to withdraw an integration arrangement. Any retrospective change would impose significant additional unplanned costs. Pension scheme rules on the calculation of benefits are many and varied, and must remain a matter for employers and scheme trustees to decide.
The Department has not issued any guidance on the effect of integrated pension schemes. However, there is an information note for Trustees, which is available on The Pensions Regulator website:
http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/docs/changes-state-pension-age-dwp-june-2016.pdf