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 (a) claims and (b) payments were made following claim approval for vaccine damage for whooping cough in each year since 2003.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
Information regarding claims and awards in respect of each particular disease/vaccine is unavailable. This is because this information is not collected or collated.
The Vaccine Damage Payments Unit administers the Scheme but do not collate information about vaccinations given to those claiming or receiving a payment under the scheme. As a number of vaccinations are often given in close proximity, often on the same day, it is not always possible to state categorically which has caused the adverse reaction. Such data is not required for the administration of the scheme.
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, if the Government will extend the payment of child maintenance to the carers of children looked after under a special guardianship order.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
A person caring for a child or children under a Special Guardianship Order is entitled to apply for statutory Child Maintenance if they satisfy the relevant legislative criteria.
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, whether it is his policy that the proposed legislation requiring young people to earn or learn will extend to existing claimants of employment and support allowance under the age of 21.
Answered by Priti Patel - Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
We will set out our policy design in due course.
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, if he will make an assessment of the consequences for his policies of the cost benefit analysis of the uprating of frozen pensions contained in the report from the International Consortium of British Pensioners, published in October 2014; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Steve Webb
There are no consequences for the Coalition Government’s policy on the up-rating of UK State Pension paid to people living overseas, which has been supported by successive post war Governments.
There are no plans to unfreeze UK State Pensions paid in those overseas jurisdictions where there is no legislative requirement to uprate.
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 people received access grants from the Local Welfare Assistance fund in (a) 2013 and (b) 2014 in Birmingham.
Answered by Steve Webb
This information is not held by the Department for Work and Pensions. We have a record of the total funding allocated to the local authority, but how the local authority has spent the money would need to be provided by that local authority.
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, whether the procurement for a new provider to deliver the work capability assessment requires the design of that scheme to be revised or reformed.
Answered by Lord Harper
The initial priority for MAXIMUS Health and Human Services Ltd will be to transition the service smoothly from the current provider, Atos Healthcare, and stabilise the service for claimants, increase the volume of assessments carried out and reduce waiting times without compromising quality.
We will work closely with MAXIMUS to enhance claimants’ experience of the service. Any lessons learned or innovations that can improve services while delivering the best results possible for claimants may lead to changes in processes.
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 criteria he used to determine that the threshold at which a change in income can lead to an adjustment in child maintenance payments should be set at 25 per cent.
Answered by Steve Webb
In determining the level of threshold the criteria considered were: to set a threshold which offered a stable maintenance liability to provide greater certainty to both parents whilst also remaining fair in dealing with unexpected and major changes in circumstances; and, to also set the threshold at a level which supports operational efficiency and secures the right balance between recalculating maintenance and collection and enforcement activity.
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, if he will make an assessment of the effect of the inclusion of a threshold of a 25 per cent change in income before child maintenance payments are adjusted in the 2012 child maintenance scheme on people paying child maintenance who are (a) self-employed and (b) in insecure work.
Answered by Steve Webb
At this point in time there are no plans to include this in the overall impact assessment of the reforms.
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 he has made of the sufficiency of the payment protection fund budget in (a) 2014-15 and (b) 2015-16 to meet current and backdated claims.
Answered by Steve Webb
I have understood the question to be about the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), which pays compensation to members of eligible pension schemes where the employer is insolvent and the scheme can not afford the PPF level of compensation.
The Board of the PPF is responsible for ensuring that it has sufficient funds to pay compensation. The Fund only has to meet the costs of compensation payments as they fall due.
The funding of the PPF has been designed to be robust in the long term.
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 sanctions have been issued by jobcentres to people (a) working in part-time employment and (b) employed on zero hours contracts in each year for which figures are available.
Answered by Esther McVey
The information requested could only be provided at disproportionate cost for point (a), regarding working in part-time employment and for point (b), claimants of JSA cannot be sanctioned in relation to a zero hours contract and therefore none of those sanctioned would be due to a zero hours contract.