Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of availability of adjustments available to dyslexic users of job centres.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Our Work Coaches engage with customers to understand individual needs to ensure they receive communications in an accessible format. For customers with dyslexia, this can include communication on non-white paper, in audio or by email.
Information about our services is accessed through GOV.UK whose standards meeting the WCA 2.0 standard allowing customers using assistance software to access our pages.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reason Financial Assistance Scheme payments are (a) treated as earned income and (b) counted against Universal Credit.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
A guiding principle for means-tested benefits, under differing Governments such as Universal Credit, State Pension Credit and Housing Benefit, is that they are not paid to people who have sufficient other income available to meet the same need. As occupational and private pensions are paid to provide support to help people meet their living costs, they are taken fully into account in the assessment of entitlement to Universal Credit. Therefore where the Financial Assistance Scheme steps in to replace pension scheme income which has become unfunded, that payments are taken into account in the same way as would have applied to the pension payments when calculating entitlement to means-tested benefits. Financial Assistance Scheme payments are treated as unearned income.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department has held recent discussions with (a) Unite the Union and (b) other trade representative bodies on the welfare of bus drivers working on buses without air conditioning.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We have not had any recent discussions with representatives from Unite the Union or other trade representative bodies on the welfare of bus drivers working on buses without air conditioning.
The Health and Safety Executive has advised that employers (including bus companies) have a legal obligation under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to make a suitable assessment of the risks to the health and safety of workers and act where necessary to minimise those risks as far as reasonably practicable. This would include the risks from extreme weather events such as heatwaves. If workers have concerns about their working conditions, in the first instance, they should raise any issues with their employer or via worker representatives such as Trade Union Representatives.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an estimate of what the levels of unemployment will be in Birmingham in the financial years (a) 2022-23, (b) 2023-24 and (c) 2024-25.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
No estimate has been made.
Official forecasts for national unemployment were published by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, as part of its Economic and Fiscal Outlook and are available: Economic and Fiscal Outlook - November 2022 (obr.uk)
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of compliance in British workplaces with International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection guidelines on non-ionizing radiations.
Answered by Chloe Smith
In Great Britain, the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection guidelines are reflected in the Control of Electromagnetic Fields at Work Regulations 2016 (EMF regulations) and the Control of Artificial Optical Radiation at Work Regulations 2010 (AOR regulations).
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) enforces the EMF and AOR regulations, which make provisions for the protection of workers and others from the health risks associated with exposure to electromagnetic fields and artificial optical radiation during work activity. There has been no recent specific assessment of trends in regulatory compliance. However, HSE recently carried out the first 5-yearly post-implementation review of the EMF regulations, which was published in July 2021. The evidence gathered as part of the review showed no significant concerns with how the regulations were helping employers control the risks associated with electromagnetic fields.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Office for National Statistics' labour market statistics data published in February 2021, what steps she is taking to tackle the disproportionate rise in unemployment among (a) Black African, (b) Black Caribbean and (c) Black British people compared to white people in the UK from 2019 to 2020.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is committed to levelling up and uniting the country, including improving the employment outcomes of people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Throughout these unprecedented times the Government has provided a crucial safety net to record levels of claimants, ensuring all our customers receive the support they need, when they need it.
We have focussed on providing financial and extensive support through our Plan for Jobs. This will protect, support and create jobs, targeting young people, the long term unemployed, and those in need of new training and skills. The Plan for Jobs includes the Kickstart scheme, an expanded youth offer, and the expansion of the Work and Health Programme, all offering new support to those, including those from ethnic minority backgrounds, who lose their job during the pandemic.
The Government is also considering the recommendations on how to increase opportunity and ensure fairness for all made in the recent independent Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what (a) recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of unemployment amongst 16 to 35 year olds and (b) steps her Department is taking to reduce unemployment among that age group in (i) Birmingham, Edgbaston constituency, (ii) Birmingham and (iii) the West Midlands region.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
(a) The Department regularly publishes statistics on the Alternative Claimant Count, and these are available by age and local authority, region and constituency here:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
The ACC provides a measure of local levels of claimant unemployment over time and across areas back to 2013
(b) The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is committed to supporting everyone who has been affected by the unprecedented impact of Covid19 on the economy and the labour market.
In July 2020 the Chancellor confirmed a Plan for Jobs, which placed DWP at the heart of providing significantly expanded employment support to people becoming newly unemployed and those falling in to long-term unemployment, investing £30bn nationally in a mix of measures to create, support and protect jobs. This included £2bn for the Kickstart scheme, £2.9bn for the Restart programme, funding to increase the number of JCP Work Coaches by 13,500 and a range of other measures focussed on boosting worksearch and skills.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people aged 16 to 35 have become unemployed between March 2020 and March 2021 in (a) Birmingham, Edgbaston constituency, (b) Birmingham and (c) the West Midlands.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The most up-to-date relevant information is provided by the Claimant Count. This is available for 16-34 year olds for Feb 2021 at:
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/default.asp
Guidance for users can be found at:
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/home/newuser.asp
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many applications have been made, covering how many vacancies, to the Kickstart scheme in (a) Birmingham and (b) the West Midlands, to date.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
So far applications from Gateways and employers covering 32,113 jobs have been approved.
We are currently finalising out MI data at a local level and we will be able to provide further
information such as regional figures in the early new year.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the most recent unemployment figures are for (a) Birmingham and (b) the West Midlands by, (i) gender, (ii) age, (iii) religion, (iv) ethnicity, and (v) socioeconomic group.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Estimates of the number of people who are unemployed are compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) using the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Annual Population Survey (APS). The LFS provides national and regional unemployment estimates whilst the APS, which is a modified version of the LFS, allows sub-regional analysis.
Estimates are based on a sample of cases and therefore subject to sampling uncertainty. Unemployment estimates at sub-regional geographies such as local authorities and parliamentary constituencies are especially uncertain, as are estimates by sub-group of the population.
Many estimates of unemployment used in this answer are publicly available on the NOMIS website (https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/). Other sources are outlined in the footnotes.
Table 1: Estimates of unemployment in a) Birmingham and b) the West Midlands by specified group
| Gender | Age1 | Religion2 | Ethnicity1,4 | Socio-economic group5 | ||||
Male | Female | 16-24 | 24-49 | 50-64 |
| White | Ethnic Minority |
| |
Birmingham (000s) | 30[1] | 241 | 24 | 23 | 7 | - 2 | 23 | 31 | - 5 |
West Midlands (000s) | 66[3] | 643 | 54 | 64 | 24 | - 2 | 94 | 49 | - 5 |
1 Source: Apr 2019-Mar 2020, Annual Population Survey
2 National unemployment rates are available in the “Religion, education and work in England and Wales: February 2020” available at the following link, more detailed breakdowns have low sample sizes https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/articles/religioneducationandworkinenglandandwales/february2020
3 Apr 2020-Jun 2020, Labour Force Survey, total unemployed - aged 16 and over
5 ONS publish employment by socio-economic classification on NOMIS but not unemployment