Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many staff were (a) recruited and (b) reassigned by his Department to work on the (i) awareness-raising campaign and (ii) applications for Pensions Credit in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Laura Trott - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
We have reassigned the full time equivalent of 100.27 colleagues and recruited 85 temporary staff to process the increased levels of Pension Credit Claims following the successful Pension Credit Campaign.
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans her Department has to replace the provision provided to people over 50 seeking employment by the European Social Fund.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Government recognises the challenges faced by some aged 50 and over, which is why we are providing a new enhanced offer for people aged 50 and over to remain in and return to work.
Eligible older job seekers on Universal Credit will receive more intensive, tailored support during the first nine months of their claim, on top of the support that work coaches offer all claimants on skills provision and job search support.
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund, (UKSPF) will act as the successor to the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund. The fund is being led by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and aims to build pride in place and increase life chances across the United Kingdom.
Places have been empowered to identify and build on their own strengths and needs at a local level through three investment priorities: communities and place, local businesses and people and skills.
Local areas have been asked to consider local need and consider which cohorts they will support – including people aged over 50 – when developing local investment plans.
The Government is currently assessing local investment plans, with first payments due to UKSPF lead local authorities later in 2022.
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many claimants her Department plans on going through Universal Credit migration before April 2023.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The Department outlined its plan for Managed Migration in its publication “Completing the move to Universal Credit".
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department plans to take steps to reduce the number of Personal Independence Payment assessments that remain outstanding prior to increasing the rate at which legacy benefit recipients are moved onto Universal Credit.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
PIP assessments and decisions are made independently of other benefits and have no impact on the pace at which legacy benefit recipients are moved onto Universal Credit.
We are seeing a gradual improvement in PIP journey times. The latest statistics show that the end-to-end journey for new and renewal claimants has steadily reduced from 26 weeks in August 2021 to 20 weeks at the end of April 2022.
In May 2022 Universal Credit started to bring a small number of claimants across the country into the mandatory migration process. We will continue to develop our processes and systems to scale the migration process and complete by 2024.
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
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 impact of her Department's policies to help people under 25 get into work on levels of youth unemployment in the most recent period for which data is available.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department launched the Plan for Jobs as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This includes DWP’s Youth Offer and the Kickstart Scheme which are targeted at supporting young people aged under 25 to find employment.
The DWP Youth Offer provides intensive Work Coach support to young people aged 16 to 24 on Universal Credit and in the Intensive Work Search group. It includes the Youth Employment Programme, Youth Employability Coaches for young people with complex needs and additional barriers, and over 150 Youth Hubs across England, Scotland, and Wales.
Since the Kickstart Scheme’s launch in September 2020 over 163,000 Kickstart jobs have been started by young people. We know that young people have been hardest hit by the economic impact of the pandemic and are delighted that employers up and down the country have made over 235,000 jobs available for them to apply to. The final Kickstart job starts took place on 31st March 2022 and the last jobs will come to an end on 30th September 2022.
The Department has a range of evaluation activities in train to assess the impact these policies on young people, in particular in relation to the department’s evaluation of the Plan for Jobs, including the DWP Youth Offer and the Kickstart Scheme.
Official Labour Market Statistics are produced by the ONS. The latest data (Feb-April ’22) shows that 455,000 young people are unemployed, this is a decrease of 7,000 on the previous quarter and a decrease of 59,000 compared to pre-pandemic levels (Dec-Feb ’20).
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether all Universal Credit claimants will receive the proposed cost of living payments at the same time as everyone else.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Due to the volume of people entitled to the payment, it is not possible to issue all of the Cost of Living Support Payments at the same time. Issuing payments will be staggered, but not by benefit type, starting on 14/07/2022.
We currently expect the majority of payments to be made by the end of July, there may be potential delays for a small minority of cases due to their unique characteristics.
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
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 that receiving a Cost of Living Payment does not negatively affect claimants' subsequent Universal Credit payments.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Cost of Living Payment will be tax-free, will not count towards the benefit cap, and will not have any impact on existing benefit awards.
Further information on these payments will be discussed in Parliament as part of the legislative process to ensure their delivery.
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
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 impact of cost of living payments on future Universal Credit payments for claimants.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Cost of Living Payments will not will not affect a person’s entitlement to social security benefits, (including Universal Credit) or tax credits - either as ‘capital’ or as ‘income’. They will also not count towards the benefit cap. This approach will allow households to retain the full value of the payments they receive.
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department will take to raise awareness of the Access to Work scheme among (a) employers and (b) employees.
Answered by Chloe Smith
DWP is committed to increasing awareness of the Access to Work scheme amongst individuals with disabilities and health conditions, employers and stakeholders.
Over the past 18 months Access to Work have delivered in-depth upskilling sessions to a wide variety of internal colleagues, including Work Coaches, Disability Employment Advisers and Employer Advisers. Externally we have also provided awareness of Access to Work to a range of organisations, employers and customer representative groups. This will continue throughout 2022, focusing activities in areas with the largest disability employment gap.
We frequently promote Access to Work through the Department’s social media channels and have introduced specific Access to Work pages on the JobHelp website (to maximise reach via our Jobhelp TV campaign), and on gov.uk. In addition, we are continuing to promote Access to Work to employers as part of the Disability Confident scheme.
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department plans to take to ensure that every jobcentre is equipped with the assistive technology disabled claimants need to apply for jobs.
Answered by Chloe Smith
DWP recently completed an upgrade of all Customer Computers across the Jobcentre network which now means that all devices provided for use by customers have the standard accessibility features available such as being able to change the screen size & colour, replacing sounds with screen alerts and using the screen reader to read text.
We currently have over 7,275 devices across our estate, registered with these accessibility features. The numbers of computers available for customers to use in jobcentres will differ depending on the COVID measures in place.
Further support is available to customers where reasonable adjustments are identified and recorded. Each Jobcentre District Office has been provided with the following items for use by customers if requested:
We have opened a number of new sites across the estate to support delivery of face to face public services. As part of this work, Customer Computers are available in these sites. Further work is also underway to provide accessibility hardware to those sites.
In addition to this, we have improved access to our Wi-Fi services in all jobcentres, allowing customers to use their own personal devices if they prefer, to access internet services.
We also constantly review the number of PCs available for customers and have capacity to increase the number of devices quickly, if the need arises.