Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
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 implications for her policies of the findings of the survey published by the End Frozen Pensions campaign on 2 November 2021 that 28 per cent of British pensioners with frozen overseas pensions are unable to access medication as a result of financial hardship.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
No assessment has been made. The decision to move abroad is voluntary and remains a personal choice dependent on the circumstances of the individual. This longstanding policy has been in place under successive governments for over 70 years.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
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 merits of establishing an independent body to advise the Government on the adequacy of welfare support.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government, as required by parliament already passes all relevant regulations pertaining to social security benefits to the Social Security Advisory Committee for independent scrutiny. The Committee also provides impartial and independent advice on a range of social security matters.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has been made of the impact of ending the £20 universal credit uplift on children living in households in receipt of that benefit.
Answered by Will Quince
No impact assessment has been made.
The Chancellor announced a temporary six-month extension to the £20 per week uplift at the Budget on 3 March to support households affected by the economic shock of Covid-19. Universal Credit has provided a vital safety net for six million people during the pandemic, and the temporary uplift was part of a COVID support package worth a total of £407 billion in 2020-21 and 2021-22.
The latest poverty figures (2019/20) demonstrate that absolute poverty rates (both before and after housing costs) for working-age adults in working families have fallen since 2009/10. In 2019/20, 8% of working age adults in working families were in absolute poverty (before housing costs), compared to 9% in 2009/10.
There have been significant positive developments in the public health situation since the uplift was first introduced. With the success of the vaccine rollout and record job vacancies, it is right that our focus is on helping people back into work.
Through our Plan for Jobs, we are targeting tailored support schemes of people of all ages to help them prepare for, get into and progress in work. These include: Kickstart, delivering tens of thousands of six-month work placements for UC claimants aged 16-24 at risk of unemployment; Restart, which provides 12 months’ intensive employment support to UC claimants who are unemployed for a year; and JETS, which provides light touch employment support for people who are claiming either Universal Credit or New Style Jobseekers Allowance, for up to 6 months, helping participants effectively re-engage with the labour market and focus their job search. We have also recruited an additional 13,500 work coaches to provide more intensive support to find a job. In total, our Plan for Jobs interventions will support more than two million people.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential effect on the ending of the £20 weekly universal credit uplift on benefit recipients in Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
No impact assessment has been made.
The Chancellor announced a temporary six-month extension to the £20 per week uplift at the Budget on 3 March to support households affected by the economic shock of Covid-19. Universal Credit has provided a vital safety net for six million people during the pandemic, and the temporary uplift was part of a COVID support package worth a total of £407 billion in 2020-21 and 2021-22.
There have been significant positive developments in the public health situation since the uplift was first introduced. With the success of the vaccine rollout and record job vacancies, it is right that our focus is on helping people back into work.
Through our Plan for Jobs, we are targeting tailored support schemes of people of all ages to help them prepare for, get into and progress in work. These include: Kickstart, delivering tens of thousands of six-month work placements for UC claimants aged 16-24 at risk of unemployment; Restart, which provides 12 months’ intensive employment support to UC claimants who are unemployed for a year; and JETS, which provides light touch employment support for people who are claiming either Universal Credit or New Style Jobseekers Allowance, for up to 6 months, helping participants effectively re-engage with the labour market and focus their job search. We have also recruited an additional 13,500 work coaches to provide more intensive support to find a job. In total, our Plan for Jobs interventions will support more than two million people.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing a secure alternative to the Post Office Card Account (POca) card for those without a bank account, which offers face-to-face support for those requiring assistance.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
We recognise that not all of our customers are able to open and operate standard accounts, which is why we offer an alternative for those customers.
The Post Office card account (POca) contract is due to end and the Department plans to start moving customers to the replacement Payment Exception Service (PES) during the coming months.
The new PES is similar to Her Majesty’s Government Payment Exception Service (HMG PES) which has been in place since 2018 and is due to end in September 2021. The HMG PES service has successfully served our most vulnerable customers by the issue of vouchers which are uploaded to a card or sent electronically via SMS or email.
The replacement PES has also been designed for customers who cannot open or manage a basic bank or standard account. We have ensured that the new service enables users to continue to obtain cash payments in their local area (including suburban and rural locations) following the end of the Post Office card account contract.
Customers identified as at risk of harm will receive additional support before being migrated to the new service. This includes outbound calls to make contact with the customer or their nominated representative and referral to the DWP visiting service to make face-to-face contact where a call is unsuccessful or identifies that a visit is required. Post migration we will track the encashment of vouchers by all customers to ensure that they are accessing the payments they receive at the level we would expect. This post migration support is significantly stronger than currently exists for POca.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
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 effect of security and fraud risks posed by Post Office Card Account (POca) voucher alternatives offered in £100 denominations.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The new Payment Exception Service has been designed as a simple service to ensure customers have access to cash. Vouchers will be uploaded to a card or sent electronically via SMS text or email. Customers will need to cash the full amount of the voucher (vouchers are maximum £100) but do not have to cash all of their vouchers at the same time. This is a similar process to when customers used to be issued with Order Books and Girocheques.
PayPoint retailers and the Post Office will ask for customer ID when someone cashes a voucher. Customers are provided with the list of acceptable ID in their welcome letter from the new PES supplier.
In designing the new service, the same levels of security have been applied as they were to HMG PES. Fraud will be treated as a business as usual process in line with existing DWP Policy.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to re-deploy staff of her Department to assist with processing new applications for social security benefits during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Our priority as a Department is ensuring people get their benefit payments and that we can continue to support those who need us the most.
We are re-deploying over 10,000 staff to critical frontline services as well as recruiting additional staff to support this priority.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many staff of her Department have formal arrangements to work from home during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Working from home data is not recorded on our HR systems. However, the number of staff logging into the Department’s computer system via a secure remote connection shows that approximately 20% of staff were working from home.
We have now provided an additional 6656 computers to enable working from home; we will deploy a further 6,000 in the next fortnight.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many of his Department's staff at the Child Maintenance Service in the Northern Business Unit, Falkirk have been employed to take enquiries from hon. Members on behalf of constituents in each of that last five years.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The table below shows the average number of caseworkers employed by the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) over the past 5 years who work in the Falkirk Complaints Team.
This team carry out a range of duties including policy queries, application fee refunds, and consolatory payments as well as handling enquiries from Members of Parliament. The team are responsible for handling any such activities relating to cases in Scotland, North East and North West England.
| 2012/2013 | 2013/2014 | 2014/2015 | 2015/2016 | 2016/2017 |
Falkirk Complaints Resolution | - | 5 | 10 | 13 | 10 |
Note:
- Data unavailable for 2012/2013 as the team was not set up until July 2013
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many members of staff have been employed by his Department (a) in total and (b) as caseworkers at the Child Maintenance Service in each of the last five years.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The table below shows how many members of staff have been employed in total by the Department for Work and Pensions and how many of these are Caseworkers for the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) over the past five years.
| 2012/2013 | 2013/2014 | 2014/2015 | 2015/2016 | 2016/2017 |
DWP | 106,551 | 97,394 | 91,464 | 86,347 | 85,301 |
CMS Caseworkers | 52 | 1,487 | 2,620 | 3,289 | 3,458* |
Notes:
- Figures show March resource level for each respective year
- *2016/2017 CMS figure shows position as of end February 2017 as March data is currently unavailable
- These figures include caseworkers at AO, EO and HEO grade. For the purposes of this answer all managers / team leaders have been excluded although these colleagues on occasion may complete work on a case