Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 merits of allowing women who are due to be released from prison to claim universal credit before their release date to prevent destitution.
Answered by David Rutley
Prisoners are not entitled to Universal Credit because they are already housed and fed by the prison estate. An exception to this is where single persons expected to serve short term sentences of 6 months or less, or who are on remand, may retain entitlement to the housing costs element of Universal Credit for up to 6 months, to safeguard tenancies and prevent homelessness on release.
DWP has around 200 Prison Work Coaches based in prisons across Great Britain who provide employment support during sentence in preparation for release, and support in preparing to make a Universal Credit claim on release. We also provide a dedicated National Universal Credit phone line, which gives quick access to the benefit system for those unable to claim online. Claimants then have access to financial support from the day they claim through Universal Credit advance payments – paid up to 100% of their expected monthly entitlement.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 there are specialist staff with trauma training in job centres.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Training and guidance is provided for all staff working with different vulnerable groups. This includes developing the skills they need to support and communicate with a diverse range of customers to provide a tailored service that recognises those with complex needs.
Jobcentre staff have access to information on services and support available in their local area for vulnerable claimants and will signpost claimants to national and local organisations who provide specialist support. This has included Trauma Informed Approach training that many staff have now completed. Nationally DWP works with J9, a domestic abuse awareness national initiative.
Work Coaches will tailor conditionality, setting requirements based on what is reasonable for the individual’s circumstances. A claimant’s work search and availability requirements can be switched off for an agreed period of time, and other work-related requirements can be lifted where appropriate. This includes where the claimant has suffered domestic violence and abuse, or periods where a child in their care is suffering distress due to experiencing or witnessing violence or abuse.
To assist identification and claimant support, each Jobcentre Plus site has a complex needs toolkit in place. These are maintained and reviewed locally and contain a named single point of contact for areas such as Homelessness, Care leavers and Prison leavers. Disability Employment Advisers (DEAs) are also on site to support when needed.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will introduce an adoption allowance comparable to Maternity Allowance for the self employed.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Government has no plans to extend adoption pay to self-employed adopters. Local Authorities can make discretionary payments to self-employed adopters who do not qualify for adoption pay.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will introduce an Adoption Allowance comparable to Maternity Allowance for self-employed people.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Government has no plans to introduce an Adoption Allowance for self-employed people. Local Authorities can make discretionary payments to self-employed adopters who do not qualify for adoption pay.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average waiting time is for customers calling the personal independence payment line.
Answered by Chloe Smith
Wait times for customers needing to make a new claim to PIP remain low with customers, on average, waiting 4 mins and 59 seconds.
Call traffic to the PIP Telephony Enquiry Line fluctuates across the day; the average speed of answer, based on the previous three months, is 23 mins and 30 seconds.
Customers calling to register a PIP Mandatory Reconsideration can expect to wait an average of 3 minutes and 2 seconds.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 reduce waiting times on the personal independence payment helplines.
Answered by Chloe Smith
Telephone calls remain the primary contact method for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) customers. Call traffic has increased significantly on the PIP enquiry line and during particularly busy periods there have been longer wait times than we would like.
We have deployed additional resources onto the enquiry line, including recruitment of more staff. Additionally, we have introduced new technology that will improve information for customers when they first call, and simplified the identity and verification process. These enhancements will increase call handling efficiency and improve the customer experience.
We are also developing new and better SMS messages to keep customers up to date and better informed. This will reduce the need for customers to contact the PIP enquiry line.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 assist autistic people into employment.
Answered by Chloe Smith
A range of DWP initiatives are supporting disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work. These include the Work and Health Programme, one-to-one support and training through the Intensive Personalised Employment Support programme, Access to Work, Disability Confident and support in partnership with the health system, including Employment Advice in NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapy services. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, we provided specialist employment support remotely and made programmes easier to access.
Every autistic person experiences autism differently, and many have complex needs or other conditions, such as a learning disability or mental health condition. We therefore design our programmes to tailor support to meet the needs of individual participants, while recognising that some approaches, such as the “place and train” model have been successful with autistic participants who have more complex needs. The IPES programme provides support that is highly personalised to meet the needs of disabled participants who are further from employment and have more complex barriers to work- this includes people with autism.
We are working with the National Autistic Society to test how we can make Jobcentre Plus services more accessible to and supportive of autistic customers, including accrediting individual offices. This test will run to the end of March 2022 and will inform future decisions about JCP provision.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of universal credit claimants had deductions made to their monthly payment in the most recent month for which figures are available.
Answered by Will Quince
New claimants do not have to wait for their first regular Universal Credit payment if they need up front support. All new UC claimants are able to request a new claim advance during the first assessment period of up to 100% of their estimated monthly award. Advances can be repaid over the following year, allowing new claimants to receive 13 payments during the year instead of 12. We are extending the maximum repayment period to two years from October 2021 to reduce the impact of taking an advance even further, and the reduction of the deductions cap from 30% to 25%.
For Universal Credit claims due a payment during August 2020, 41% (1,847,000 claims) had a deduction (excluding sanctions and fraud penalties).
For those who find themselves in unexpected hardship, advance repayments can be deferred for up to three months in certain cases.
Notes