Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what guidance her Department issues to businesses on their responsibilities as employers during periods of hot weather.
Answered by Sarah Newton
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 25 April 2018 to Question UIN 136530.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans he has to respond to the recommendations in the Trussell Trust report, Is universal credit truly universal?, on foodbank use; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
People use food banks for many and varied reasons, and it would be misleading to link them to any single cause. Work offers people the best opportunity to get out of poverty and to become self-reliant; adults in working families are around four times less likely to be in poverty than those in workless families. This is why we are undertaking the most ambitious reform to the welfare system in decades - so that it supports people to find and to stay in work. While there are no official statistics on food bank usage, recent data from the Trussell Trust shows that the majority of users are out of work.
As a safeguard for people needing more support, we have a well-established system of hardship payments, benefit advances and budgeting loans. Universal Credit has introduced a further package of measures announced at the Autumn Budget 2017, such as making advances of up to 100 per cent of the indicative award available and increasing the repayment period to 12 months, removing the 7 waiting days, providing an additional payment of 2 weeks of Housing Benefit to support claimants when they transition to UC, and changing how claimants in temporary accommodation receive support for their housing costs.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate her Department has made of the number of women who are unable to afford sanitary products.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Officials from the Department for Work and Pensions attend regular cross-departmental meetings about a range of issues linked to the availability and affordability of sanitary protection. This Department has not, however, made any estimates of the number of women who are unable to afford sanitary products, or collected any relevant data.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the effect of universal credit and pension credit regulations on couples where one person is over the pension age and the other is below that age.
Answered by Guy Opperman
Currently, when one member of a couple has reached Pension Credit qualifying age, that member may claim Pension Credit for the couple. Under the Welfare Reform Act 2012, in order to ensure that the younger partner is subject to the same labour-market conditions as other people of the same age, couples needing benefit support where one member of the couple has yet to reach Pension Credit qualifying age will need to claim Universal Credit rather than Pension Credit. This will apply to new claims only. Existing claims to Pension Credit from such couples will be protected.
A number of Impact Assessments were published to support the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 through Parliament; including the Universal Credit Impact Assessment on 10 December 2012. This can be found on GOV.UK at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/220177/universal-credit-wr2011-ia.pdf
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many claims for the Social Fund Funeral Expenses Payment Scheme her Department (a) received and (b) accepted in (i) the West Midlands and (ii) England in 2016-17.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Table 1 below gives the number of applications received and number of awards for Funeral Expenses Payments in England and in the West Midlands government office region in 2016/17.
Table 1: applications received and awards for Funeral Expense Payments in England and West Midlands, 2016/17
| England | West Midlands |
Applications received | 35,900 | 4,400 |
Awards | 21,200 | 2,600 |
Source: Policy, Budget and Management Information System
Notes: