Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress her Department has made on supporting young people into high-skilled jobs in Hendon constituency.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Through Jobcentre Plus, DWP is helping young people to find the right support, education or training that will ultimately lead to sustained employment opportunities and career progression.
The Plan for Jobs provides a comprehensive package of support for young people, including the DWP Youth Offer. We have extended the DWP Youth Offer to 2025 and expanded eligibility to include 16 and 17-year-olds, in addition to 18 to 24-year olds, who are claiming Universal Credit and searching for work.
Both Hendon Jobcentres support young people through the DWP Youth Offer, which includes intensive Work Coach support, Youth Employability Coaches for those with additional barriers, and access to the Youth Hub in the Grahame Park area.
Core skills are fundamental in securing, retaining, and progressing in work. This Government has invested in apprenticeships, traineeships, vocational and basic skills training, alongside careers advice and Sector-based Work Academy Programmes (SWAPs).
SWAP opportunities link skills/employability training with guaranteed interviews and real vacancies – providing a routeway into work for young people. Whilst many opportunities are entry level, they often offer good career pathways and in work progression. Springboard has recently offered SWAP opportunities in the hospitality sector in each of the four London Districts and are available to young claimants in Hendon. The jobcentre team are also working with No1 Fitness Academy, who are running a 6-week employability programme for young people in Hendon.
Employers from a range of sectors recruit on site daily and we deliver a Job Club to support with applications and interview techniques. Across North London, we hold regular recruitment events with multiple employers offering jobs with a range of entry levels.
The local jobcentre team work collaboratively with Barnet Council and various partners to support Hendon’s young people, developing skills provision and routeways into higher skilled jobs in sectors including construction, computer programming and fitness instruction.
We work closely with the GLA, London Councils and our College Principles. We are working collaboratively to develop Skills Bootcamps in line with priority sectors and we also support the mayor’s priorities around Good Work for Londoners.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will publish a strategy to tackle child poverty in Hendon constituency.
Answered by David Rutley
With almost 1.32 million vacancies across the UK, our plan for tackling poverty is firmly focussed on supporting people to move into and progress in work. Our approach is based on clear evidence about the importance of parental employment – particularly where it is full-time – in substantially reducing the risks of child poverty and in improving long-term outcomes for families and children.
This plan includes our multi-billion-pound Plan for Jobs, which has been expanded by £500 million, and Way to Work, which is a concerted drive across the UK to help half a million currently out of work people into jobs by the end of June 2022. We have recruited around 13,500 additional work coaches who are all trained to develop a detailed knowledge of their local labour market and to offer claimants the tailored support they need to take advantage of new opportunities wherever they live in the UK.
We recognise that some people require additional support and from April, the government is providing an additional £500 million to help households with the cost of essentials, on top of what we have already provided since October 2021, bringing the total funding for this support to £1 billion. Under the first round of funding, the London Borough of Barnet Council was allocated £2,455,182.90 of funding, and they are provisionally allocated the same amount again for the extension of the fund.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
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 effect of P&O’s decision to terminate the employment of 800 of its staff on the future viability of the Merchant Navy Ratings Pension Fund.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Merchant Navy Ratings Pension Fund (MNRPF) is a private sector, multi-employer scheme.
The UK has a robust and flexible framework for pension scheme funding, to protect members benefits. The accrued benefits of UK P&O staff will be protected by these arrangements. The independent Pensions Regulator is working closely with the trustee of the MNRPF in its role to protect pension scheme savers. It would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what exposure her Department has to the Merchant Navy Ratings Pension Fund.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Merchant Navy Ratings Pension Fund is a private sector multi-employer scheme.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much expenditure by her Department that was identified as fraudulent was repaid to her Department in each of the last three years.
Answered by David Rutley
The Department publishes Fraud and Error estimates, as shown in the link, which include data on how much money was potentially lost to Fraud in each of the last 3 years. Fraud and Error in the benefit system is rare, but we know that organised criminals and opportunists sought to exploit the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic for gain. We took steps to stop this and estimate that we prevented nearly £3bn of additional fraud and error in 2020/21.
fraud-and-error-stats-release-2020-2021-estimates-tables-xls.xlsx (live.com)
These same statistics also indicate how much money was repaid by way of benefit debt. The totals include debts incurred through Fraud, Claimant Error, and where appropriate, Official Error.
The repayment figures are:
20/21: £0.8bn (£0.5bn Housing Benefit and £0.3bn other DWP benefits)
19/20: £1.0bn (£0.6bn Housing Benefit and £0.4bn other DWP benefits)
18/19: £1.1bn (£0.7bn Housing Benefit and £0.4bn other DWP benefits)
The slight fall in 20/21 was due in part to debt recovery being paused for three months from April 2020, so that Debt Management staff could support processing of the substantial rise in new Universal Credit claims, following the outbreak of coronavirus.
Note that other benefits recovered by DWP, including Tax Credits and Advances, are not included in these totals.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much expenditure by her Department was identified as fraudulent in the last three years.
Answered by David Rutley
The Department publishes Fraud and Error estimates, as shown in the link, which include data on how much money was potentially lost to Fraud in each of the last 3 years. Fraud and Error in the benefit system is rare, but we know that organised criminals and opportunists sought to exploit the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic for gain. We took steps to stop this and estimate that we prevented nearly £3bn of additional fraud and error in 2020/21.
fraud-and-error-stats-release-2020-2021-estimates-tables-xls.xlsx (live.com)
These same statistics also indicate how much money was repaid by way of benefit debt. The totals include debts incurred through Fraud, Claimant Error, and where appropriate, Official Error.
The repayment figures are:
20/21: £0.8bn (£0.5bn Housing Benefit and £0.3bn other DWP benefits)
19/20: £1.0bn (£0.6bn Housing Benefit and £0.4bn other DWP benefits)
18/19: £1.1bn (£0.7bn Housing Benefit and £0.4bn other DWP benefits)
The slight fall in 20/21 was due in part to debt recovery being paused for three months from April 2020, so that Debt Management staff could support processing of the substantial rise in new Universal Credit claims, following the outbreak of coronavirus.
Note that other benefits recovered by DWP, including Tax Credits and Advances, are not included in these totals.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people have been awarded pension credit in Hendon constituency in each of the last five years.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The following table shows the number of Pension Credit recipients since August 2017 in Hendon.
Year | Pension Credit recipients in Hendon |
2017 | 3,354 |
2018 | 3,160 |
2019 | 3,030 |
2020 | 2,903 |
2021 | 2,832 |
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much her Department has spent on tackling benefit fraud in each of the last three financial years.
Answered by David Rutley
All Department for Work and Pensions staff have a role in tackling benefit fraud, which is why all staff undertake mandatory fraud training each year.
The figures provided reflect the direct cost of investigation work plus the cost of investment in fraud detection systems, which, over the last 3 years, amounted to £198m (2018/19), £220m (2019/20) and £162m (2020/21). Note that 2020/21 costs reduced because people were redeployed to front line Operations to help with the COVID claim surge.
Figures do not include indirect costs, such as accommodation or IT.
Looking ahead, the Department has confirmed an additional three year £613 million investment from the October Comprehensive Spending Review settlement and the announcement in December 2021, which will support a targeted review of Universal Credit claims, the development of a new Debt Enforcement Function and further recruitment into the Counter Fraud and Compliance and Debt Directorate so that we can continue to respond quickly and effectively to threats. This includes funding for around 2,000 trained specialists to identify and stop scammers. We expect this to make a significant reduction in the fraud and error challenge we face.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
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 help achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
Answered by Guy Opperman
Our plan for Net Zero will generate thousands of well-paid jobs here in the UK, help us develop thriving, world-leading green industries, strengthen our energy security, and improve our health and well-being. Acting now will put us at the forefront of large, expanding global markets and allow us to capitalise on export opportunities so that the UK becomes an importer rather than a customer of the technology of the future. This is why the government's approach will be tech-led using the best of British technology and innovation – just as we did in the last industrial revolution – to help make homes and buildings warmer, the air cleaner and our journeys greener, all while creating thousands of jobs in new future-proof industries.
Our Net Zero Strategy sets out a plan to: