Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 9 May 2019 to Question 250471, what information her Department has provided to London Borough of Tower Hamlets on the (a) number and (b) contact details of those people whose claims were wrongly recorded on the ATLAS system.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
As part of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) underpayment exercise we are informing Local Authorities of any new and past awards of income-related ESA where Local Authorities have registered an interest via the relevant system, in line with our business as usual procedures.
We are in the process of developing additional guidance to support Local Authorities to consider further any possible impacts on individuals of the ESA underpayment exercise.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 24 June 2019 to Question 266836 on Shared Accommodation Rate, what standard deduction rent officers make for fuel from the advertised rents for rooms in shared accommodation in the (a) Central London, (b) Inner East London, (c) Inner North London, (d) Inner South East London, (e) Inner South West London and (f) Inner West London Broad Rental Market Areas.
Answered by Will Quince
There are no standard deductions for ineligible services for the specific Broad Rental Market Areas listed. In order to ensure a consistent approach, Rent Officers have a national guide to service deductions which has been arrived at following research of utility company pricing. The Rent Officer refers to the standard deductions and decides whether it is appropriate to apply them, however ultimately each case will be looked at on an individual basis.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 9 May 2019 to Question 250471 on Employment and Support Allowance, how many claimants in each London borough were incorrectly classified as being entitled to contribution-based rather than income-based Employment and Support Allowance.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
We are not able to make robust estimates of the numbers of cases likely to be due arrears at a local authority level. All estimates are national only.
Local authority breakdowns of numbers of cases that have been paid arrears to date could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
We are focusing our efforts on contacting all potentially affected individuals to ensure they are paid as quickly as possible.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many pieces of unstructured white mail have been directed to the Derby contact centre to deal with since the creation of the team established to retrieve all such correspondence; and how many items of that mail are still awaiting redirection to the correct department in that centre.
Answered by Will Quince
Unstructured White Mail is post that is received but does not have a prescribed structure, such as handwritten letters or non DWP forms.
There is no centre to deal specifically with unstructured white mail. There is, however, a team in Derby Contact Centre which receives mail that cannot be attributed to a specific customer or benefit stream and their role is to identify the customer details and benefit stream so that the mail can then be scanned into the relevant systems. The Department does not keep records of volume.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the Valuation Office Agency makes a deduction for (a) water and (b) fuel from the advertised rent for a room in shared accommodation when calculating the 30 per centile of the shared accommodation rate in each broad rental market area.
Answered by Will Quince
The Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) Order 1997 instructs Rent Officers how to compile the list of rents used in the calculation of local housing allowance rates (including the shared accommodation rate) and the 30th percentile of local rents for each broad rental market area. In compiling the list of rents, Rent Officers must exclude the amount of any rent which in the Rent Officer’s opinion is attributable to provision of services or facilities made available to the tenant which are ineligible to be met by Housing Benefit.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the local reference rent levels for each broad rental market area published on 30 April 2019 are based upon the median of market rents for each area.
Answered by Will Quince
The Local Reference Rent is determined in accordance with the formula set out in the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) Order 1997 for calculating a median rent. The Local Reference Rent is based upon the number of bedrooms and living rooms within the property.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what guidance she has issued to her Department's decision-makers on the classification of EU nationals with indefinite leave to remain through the EU settled status scheme as habitually resident for the purposes of claiming (a) universal credit and (b) other means-tested benefits.
Answered by Lord Sharma
The relevant guidance for decision makers can be found for (a) Universal Credit in the Advice for Decision Making (ADM) memo 09/19, available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/800793/adm9-19.pdf, and (b) other income-related benefits in the Decision Makers’ Guide (DMG) memo 06/19, available online at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/800795/dmg6-19.pdf.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when she plans to publish a consultation on reform of statutory sick pay.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
We plan to consult later this year on measures to reform Statutory Sick Pay.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the recommendation to exempt claimants in temporary accommodation from the benefit cap on page 7 of the report of the Work and Pensions Committee, The Benefit Cap, published on 12 March 2019, HC 1477, if she will ask local authorities to publish the number of households that are currently affected by the cap in their area; and how much Discretionary Housing Payment funding has been used to cover their rent shortfalls in the most recent period for which figures are available.
Answered by Will Quince
The latest official statistics for households capped under Housing Benefit and Universal Credit were published on 2nd May 2019, and contain data on households capped to February 2019, published here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/benefit-cap-number-of-households-capped-to-february-2019.
Statistics by Local Authority are available in Tables 2 and 9, respectively. The number of households who have had their Housing Benefit award capped by local authorities are also published on the DWP Stat Xplore portal (https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/).
Statistics on the use of Discretionary Housing Payments (for local authorities in England and Wales) are provided by local authorities on a voluntary basis and as such may not correspond exactly to the total Discretionary Housing Payment funds allocated. In addition, Discretionary Housing Payment awards can be recorded against a combination of welfare reform categories including households affected by the benefit cap.
The latest statistics on spend by local authorities, covering the period April to September 2018, are published here:
Statistics relating to the specific welfare reform category can be found in Table 7.
The latest full year of statistics available are for the 17/18 financial year and are published here:
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Stepney)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 26 July 2018 to Question 165571 on employment and support allowance, if she will take steps to include the cost of NHS prescription charges and school meals incurred by affected claimants in the underpayment review as recommended in paragraph 2.15 of the National Audit Office report, Investigation into Errors in Employment and Support Allowance, HC 837, published on 19 March 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
We are engaging with a number of authorities who are responsible for passported benefits to raise awareness of the ESA underpayment exercise and the potential issues arising from it. This will enable Departments to understand the impacts on passported benefits they administer.
DWP does not hold information on what people may or may not have claimed. Our focus is on making sure people receive the arrears of ESA they are entitled to.