Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many recipients of Support for Mortgage Interest have received information on forthcoming changes to that scheme.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
To date, the department has sent information to 105,000 SMI claimants.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in (a) Hove constituency, (b) East Sussex, (c) the South East receive Support for Mortgage Interest; and how many of those people receive (i) employment support allowance, (ii) personal independence payments and (iii) jobseeker’s allowance.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The table below gives the Department’s estimates of the caseload of Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) split by benefit and one selected geography.
| All SMI | SMI and Employment and Support Allowance | SMI and Job Seeker’s Allowance |
South East | 11,000 | 5,000 | - |
Table 1: SMI caseload by benefit in one selected geography
Data is not available on:
Figures are rounded to the nearest 1,000 cases.
‘-’ denotes under 500 cases.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what his policy is on a formal appeal process for decisions on early advances for universal credit.
Answered by Damian Hinds
Advances are time sensitive because an advance payment meets the immediate need of the claimant. So there is no right of appeal to an independent tribunal against a refusal. We have an alternative process which enables a claimant to ask for a decision to be looked at again within the office, at pace.
The most common grounds for a refusal of an advance payment are because the claimant already has available funds, for example: savings, earnings, redundancy payments or support from the claimant or partner’s parents, family or friends. This list is not exhaustive.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on what date the dedicated team to assist with complaints from women adversely affected by an increase in the state pension age will commence work; what the timetable will be for complaints to be dealt with by that team; and how the outcome of the investigation of that complaint will be communicated to the complainant.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Independent Case Examiner (ICE) office has recently set up a team dedicated to investigating complaints from women affected by the increase in the state pension. The team became operational on 2 October 2017. Their aim is to complete an investigation within 20 weeks of the case being allocated for investigation, with the outcome being communicated directly to the complainant in a report from the Independent Case Examiner.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
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 implications for his policies of reports from the Trussell Trust that foodbanks in areas of full universal credit roll-out have seen a 16.85 per cent average increase in referrals for emergency food.
Answered by Damian Hinds
Reports from the Trussell Trust confirm that there are many reasons and a variety of complex, interacting underlying causes that result in people having to use foodbanks. People using foodbanks do not fit into one simple category.
Universal Credit is helping people into work and we offer advances at the start of the claim so claimants have money to tide them over until their first payment.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many complaints the Child Maintenance Service received in the first six months of 2017 on the 25 per cent threshold for payment reassessment.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
In the first 6 months of 2017 the CMS has received 25 complaints where the 25% payment reassessment threshold was recorded to be part of, but not necessarily the main driver of, the complaint.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Answer of 5 April 2017 to Question 69482, on work capability assessments, when he expects the results of the pilot to test audio recording of personal independence payment face-to-face assessments to be published.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt
We have always been clear that we are continuously looking at ways to improve the claimant experience and this pilot provided an opportunity to examine whether there are any benefits to audio recording face-to-face assessments.
Whilst the evaluation findings of this small scale pilot will not be published separately they will help inform the Government’s response to the Second Independent Review.