Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton 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 impact of the Restart Scheme in regions with persistently high unemployment.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Department is currently undertaking a quantitative impact evaluation of the Restart Scheme. This evaluation will assess the overall effectiveness of the scheme nationally, including areas of high unemployment, but will not necessarily be able to draw conclusions about these areas in isolation, we aim to publish the findings by the end of this year.
In addition, the Restart Scheme Evaluation, published in May 2024 The Evaluation of the Restart Scheme – May 2024, provides analysis of delivery across different Contract Package Areas.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress she has made on integrating (a) employment and (b) health services for people out of work long-term.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Good work is generally good for health and wellbeing, so we want everyone to get work and get on in work, whoever they are and wherever they live. Disabled people and people with health conditions are a diverse group so access to the right work and health support, in the right place, at the right time, is key. We therefore have a range of specialist initiatives to support individuals to stay in work and get back into work, including those that join up employment and health systems.
Measures include support from Work Coaches and Disability Employment Advisers in Jobcentres and Access to Work grants, as well as joining up health and employment support around the individual through Employment Advisors in NHS Talking Therapies, Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care and WorkWell.
The Department also provides a range of support to help individuals to access, retain, and thrive in employment. This includes referrals to financial assistance, workplace adaptations, and personalised guidance. Our teams support customers with Access to Work to ensure customers have reasonable adjustment, specialist equipment, support workers and more to ensure that customers have all the necessary tools to get into and maintain work.
It is also recognised that employers play an important role in addressing health and disability. To build on this, the DWP and DHSC Joint Work & Health Directorate (JWHD) is facilitating “Keep Britain Working”, an independent review of the role of UK employers in reducing health-related inactivity and to promote healthy and inclusive workplaces. The lead reviewer, Sir Charlie Mayfield, is expected to bring forward recommendations in Autumn 2025.
Additionally, the JWHD has developed a digital information service for employers, continues to oversee the Disability Confident Scheme, and continues to increase access to Occupational Health.
Backed by £240m investment, the Get Britain Working White Paper launched last November will drive forward approaches to tackling economic inactivity and work toward the long-term ambition of an 80% employment rate. In our March Green Paper, we set-out our Pathways to Work Guarantee, backed by £1 billion a year of new, additional funding by 2030 and a total of £2.2 billion by over four years. Our £2.2bn Pathways to Work investment brings our total investment in employment support for disabled people and those with health conditions to £3.8 billion over this Parliament. We will build towards a guaranteed offer of personalised work, health and skills support for all disabled people and those with health conditions on out of work benefits.
We will further pilot the integration of employment advisers and work coaches into the neighbourhood health service, so that working age people with long term health conditions have an integrated public service offer. A patient’s employment goals will be part of care plans, to support more joined up service provision. The Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health and Social Care have worked together on the 10 Year Health Plan. The 10 Year Health Plan will ensure a better health service for everyone, regardless of condition or service area. The Plan sets out the vision for what good joined-up care looks like for people with a combination of health and care needs, including for disabled people.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent discussions she has had with local authorities on tackling in-work poverty.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
We know that working full-time substantially reduces the risk of being in poverty. Working age adults living in households where no adults are in work were around 6 times more likely to be in relative poverty after housing costs than working age adults in households where all adults work. This is why supporting people into good work will always be the foundation of our approach to delivering lasting change.
Ministers and officials have regular discussions with Local Authorities, including quarterly meetings with both Mayors and Local Government Association representatives to discuss progress with our Get Britain Working initiatives. These proposals, backed by an initial £240 million investment in 25/26, will deliver the biggest reforms to employment support in a generation to help more people to access good, meaningful work, and support them to progress in work, including through an enhanced focus on skills and careers.
Alongside this, our plan to Make Work will help more people to stay in work, improve job security and boost living standards including by increasing the National Living Wage by 6.7 per cent to £12.21 an hour, boosting the pay of 3 million workers.
We have also commenced reviewing Universal Credit to make sure it is doing the job we want it to do, to make work pay and tackle poverty. We have begun this work by introducing a Fair Repayment Rate for deductions from Universal Credit and announcing the first sustained above inflation rise in the basic rate of Universal Credit since it was introduced.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimate she has made of the levels of (a) fraud and (b) error in the welfare system in the North East.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Estimates of the levels of fraud and error in the benefit system for the financial year 2024-25 can be found at: Fraud and error in the benefit system: financial year 2024 to 2025 estimates - GOV.UK
We do not provide sub-national estimates of fraud and error as we are unable to break the statistics down to this level.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton 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 impact of changes to the eligibility criteria for the Winter Fuel Payment on vulnerable groups in Wales.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government wants to expand eligibility for Winter Fuel Payments, recognising the goals of supporting these pensioners, meeting need and of sustainable public finances. Any change will be announced to Parliament in the normal way.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton 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 trends in the level of youth unemployment since 2010.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Youth unemployment in 2010 was high following the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds for Jul-Sep 2024 is 14.8% (4.5 percentage points lower than in Jul-Sep 2010). In recent quarters the youth unemployment rate has been increasing. It has increased by 2.8 percentage points on the year.
To address this our plan to get Britain working includes a new Youth Guarantee for all young people aged 18-21 to ensure that they can access quality training opportunities, an apprenticeship or help to find work to reduce the number of young people not earning or learning. We are working with eight Youth Guarantee Trailblazers areas to test new ways of supporting young people into employment or training, by bringing together and enhancing existing programmes in partnership with local areas. We expect the trailblazers to launch from Spring 2025.
The White Paper also sets out a range of measures to prevent youth inactivity before 18 – including an expansion of work experience and careers advice, action to tackle school attendance and steps to improve access to mental health services for young people
Recent unemployment estimates are subject to heightened volatility due to ongoing data quality problems with the ONS Labour Force Survey. This is particularly the case for the 16 to 24-year-old group, which as a smaller population group has wider margins of error than whole population estimates. Additionally, data prior to Jun-Aug 2011 has not been re-weighted by the ONS causing a discontinuity.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of recent changes to the eligibility criteria for the Winter Fuel Payment on trends in the level of pensioners living in (a) relative and (b) absolute poverty.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
On 19 November, Secretary of State wrote to the Work and Pensions Select Committee to share internal government modelling produced by the Department outlining estimates of the number of pensioners estimated to move into poverty as a result of the policy change. This letter is available here Winter Fuel Payments eligibility change - Letter from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
The latest modelling shows that compared to the numbers that would have been in poverty without this policy, it is estimated that:
(a) there will be an additional 50,000 pensioners in relative poverty after housing costs in 2024/25, 2025/26 and 2027/28 and an additional 100,000 pensioners in relative poverty after housing costs in 2026/27, 2028/29 and 2029/30.
(b) for all other measures of poverty, it is estimated that there will be an additional 50,000 pensioners in poverty each year from 2024/25 to 2029/30.
The poverty impacts represent the change in the numbers in poverty as a result of the policy change only. They are not an estimate of the change in overall poverty each year or over time and should not be added together or interpreted as cumulative data.
It's important to note that this modelling is subject to a range of uncertainties meaning the poverty impacts are rounded to the nearest 50,000 individuals and the nearest 0.1 percentage point which should be taken into account when interpreting the results. This means that small variations in the underlying numbers impacted can lead to much larger changes in the rounded headline numbers.
The modelling does not account for any other measures announced at the Autumn Budget. The modelling also does not include any impacts on Pension Credit take-up as a result of the changes to Winter Fuel Payment eligibility.
The Prime Minister has been clear that means-testing the Winter Fuel Payment is not a decision that the Government wanted to take but given the £22 billion black hole in the economy, tough choices had to be made to fix the foundations and restore economic stability to make everyone better off in the long term.
Last year Winter Fuel Payments cost around £2 billion and were paid to pensioners regardless of their income. Given the dire state of the public finances the Government has inherited, it’s right that the Government targets support to those who need it most while the Government continues our work to stabilise the economy.
But the Government will continue to stand behind vulnerable households this winter, including through delivering the £150 Warm Home Discount for low-income households from October and extending the Household Support Fund with £421 million to ensure local authorities can support vulnerable people and families. The Government will also ensure around 1.3 million households in England and Wales will continue to receive up to £300 in Winter Fuel Payments, and the new state pension will increase by around £470 next year, which will significantly outstrip any loss for pensioners of the winter fuel payments.
In addition, the Government and industry have worked together to deliver a £500m Winter Support Commitment for customers, which will help customers most in need by providing credit on bills, enhanced debt write-off schemes, and increased funding for charity partners to target hard to reach customers.
The Government continues to urge anyone who thinks they may be entitled to Pension Credit to check now, as all eligible claims can be backdated, and anyone who makes a successful claim will receive their payment. Over a million pensioners will still receive the Winter Fuel Payment and our drive to boost Pension Credit take up has already seen a 145% increase in claims. Anyone who makes a successful claim for Pension Credit before 21 December and meets the eligibility criteria will receive both Pension Credit and a Winter Fuel Payment, and the Government has deployed more than 500 additional staff to process the increase in Pension Credit claims.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
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 use technology to improve its productivity.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
As part of the Department’s ongoing transformation, we are increasing our use of automation, improving our underlying technology, and increasing the number of citizen self-service opportunities where it is appropriate to do so, meaning that, despite increased demand on our services, more of our time can be deployed onto the activities that support our customers at the point of demand.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton 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 implications for her policies of trends in the level of women in employment since 2010.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Government is committed to tackling the challenges women face in the labour market and takes seriously the challenges they face in balancing work with other life events. The Public Sector Equality Duty requires public authorities to consider impacts on those with protected characteristics, including sex, when exercising their functions, like making decisions. Female participation in the labour market grew substantially over the 2010s, predominantly driven by changes to the female State Pension Age. In recent years, participation has stalled and has only grown by 0.9 percentage points in the last 5 years, and the employment rate for women aged 16-64 currently stands at 72.1%. (Source: Labour Force Survey, Jul-Sep 2024).
As set out in the Get Britain Working White Paper, too many women who care for their families still experience challenges staying and progressing in work. This is reflected in the higher rates of female inactivity and unpaid carers, and contributes to the gender pay gap. The Get Britain Working White Paper sets out how it will take a system-wide approach to reducing barriers to work, including measures to make it easier to access affordable childcare and manage caring responsibilities alongside work.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton 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 effectiveness of the Pension Credit awareness campaign.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Our campaign has seen DWP receive around 150,000 Pension Credit applications in the 16 weeks since the Winter Fuel Payment announcement compared to around 61,300 Pension Credit applications in the preceding 16 weeks. This represents a 145% increase in applications. The latest figures also show that 42,500 Pension Credit awards were made since the 29 July.