Asked by: Saqib Bhatti (Conservative - Meriden and Solihull East)
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 potential impact of expanding Statutory Sick Pay on recruitment agencies; and if he will consider taking steps to (a) enable agencies to recover SSP costs from hirers where workers fall ill during assignments, (b) clarify how Day 1 entitlement applies to agency workers and (c) strengthen HMRC’s role in preventing multiple SSP claims across different agencies.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Strengthening Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) is part of the Government’s Plan to Make Work Pay. The Government conducted a Regulatory Impact Assessment Here on the impact of the SSP measures in the Employment Rights Bill.
Whilst this is not a specific assessment on the impact on recruitment agencies, the Government believes that the SSP measures strike the right balance between providing financial security to employees and limiting additional costs to employers, including agencies. The Bill ensures that people who work through employment agencies and employment businesses have comparable rights and protections to their counterparts who are directly employed.
a) We do not intend to make changes to allow agencies to recover SSP costs from end hirers during gaps in assignment. The government believes that employers, including those in the recruitment sector, are best placed to manage sickness absences and ensuring employees receive appropriate support. The removal of the waiting period means all eligible employees will be entitled to SSP from Day 1 of their sickness absence. This includes eligible agency workers. This enables employees to take the time off work they need to recover when sick.
b) Strengthening HMRC’s role in preventing multiple SSP claims from one employee would require mandatory reporting from businesses. This would be administratively burdensome, particularly for SMEs.
Asked by: Saqib Bhatti (Conservative - Meriden and Solihull East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reason the Child Maintenance Service deems receipt of Child Benefit to be sufficient evidence that a child is still in full-time education.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
To qualify for maintenance payments, a child must meet the Child Maintenance Service's criteria. They must be under 20 years of age and in full time, non-advanced education, or approved training, and eligible for Child Benefit. They must also be habitually resident in the UK and usually living in the same household as the receiving parent. Child maintenance defines a child the same way as Child Benefit does, to offer consistency across rules.
Child maintenance payments usually stop when the child reaches 16, or 20 if they are in full-time education up to A-level or equivalent. Child maintenance will also stop when the child stops being eligible for Child Benefit. Child Benefit may stay in payment for a period after a child under 20 ceases education or training until a terminal date is reached. Child Benefit will remain payable from the date education or training ceased, up to and including the week that includes the first terminal date, as will child maintenance payments.
Child Maintenance Service make automated monthly requests to His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) asking for all children aged 16 to 19 who are included in its caseload, to establish whether Child Benefit is still in payment.
Asked by: Saqib Bhatti (Conservative - Meriden and Solihull East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reason child maintenance arrears are not offset against the amount owed by a paying parent after they have moved from being a receiving parent.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service is dedicated to ensuring parents meet their obligations to children and will do everything to encourage cooperation between separated parents and encourage parents to meet their responsibilities to provide their children with financial support.
Child Maintenance Regulations provide that “offsetting” is a process that allows the Child Maintenance Service to adjust child maintenance payments and arrears in specific scenarios between the Paying Parent and the Receiving Parent.
Child Maintenance role reversal offsetting occurs when a qualifying child changes the parent they live with. This means that the Receiving Parent and the Paying Parent reverse their roles in relation to the qualifying child, so that the Receiving Parent becomes the Paying Parent and vice versa. The potential for a debt against debt offset arises where the former Paying Parent (now the Receiving Parent) owed arrears to the former Receiving Parent (now the Paying Parent) at the point their roles were reversed, and the new Paying Parent fails to pay their current liability, so that they now owe arrears to the new Receiving Parent.
When deciding whether it is appropriate to offset ongoing payments against arrears, caseworkers must consider the length of time that the parent who owes the arrears will be without their ongoing maintenance payments because the payments they are due to receive will be stopped or reduced in comparison with the arrears that they owe. It is essential that caseworkers carefully consider the effect that this may have on the welfare of all children potentially affected.
Asked by: Saqib Bhatti (Conservative - Meriden and Solihull East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment the Child Maintenance Service has made of the potential impact of GDPR legislation on the ability of paying parents to find proof that their child is still in full-time education.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
If a paying parent believes that the Child Maintenance (CM) liability should cease because a qualifying child (QC) no longer meets the statutory definition of a qualifying young person but checks with His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) disagree, the CM caseworker can ask the receiving parent to provide;
1. verbal confirmation of the QCs status if they agree that the paying parent’s statement is correct, or
2. where they disagree with the paying parent, a letter from the school or college confirming the QCs status, or
3. written confirmation from an employer that the QC has started work.
Where the paying parent believes that Child Benefit is claimed fraudulently, the paying parent will be signposted to report the fraud to HMRC at Gov.UK.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) makes automated monthly requests to HMRC asking for all children aged 16 to 19 who are included in its caseload, to establish whether Child Benefit is still in payment.
The CMS has a Financial Investigations Unit (FIU), that can investigate complex cases. This is a specialist team which can request information to check the accuracy of information the CMS is given by either parent.
Asked by: Saqib Bhatti (Conservative - Meriden and Solihull East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment the Child Maintenance Service has made of the potential merits of working with authorities with investigatory powers to help paying parents to find supporting information.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
If a paying parent believes that the Child Maintenance (CM) liability should cease because a qualifying child (QC) no longer meets the statutory definition of a qualifying young person but checks with His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) disagree, the CM caseworker can ask the receiving parent to provide;
1. verbal confirmation of the QCs status if they agree that the paying parent’s statement is correct, or
2. where they disagree with the paying parent, a letter from the school or college confirming the QCs status, or
3. written confirmation from an employer that the QC has started work.
Where the paying parent believes that Child Benefit is claimed fraudulently, the paying parent will be signposted to report the fraud to HMRC at Gov.UK.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) makes automated monthly requests to HMRC asking for all children aged 16 to 19 who are included in its caseload, to establish whether Child Benefit is still in payment.
The CMS has a Financial Investigations Unit (FIU), that can investigate complex cases. This is a specialist team which can request information to check the accuracy of information the CMS is given by either parent.
Asked by: Saqib Bhatti (Conservative - Meriden and Solihull East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in Meriden and Solihull East constituency will be impacted by planned changes to winter fuel payments.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Please note that following boundary changes to Parliamentary Constituencies, data on Meriden and Solihull East constituency is not explicitly available/ published. To obtain the above figure, data on the previous Solihull constituency and previous Meriden constituency have been combined. Therefore, the above figure of 39,091 is likely to be an overestimate as the new Meriden and Solihull East constituency consists of some of the areas of the previous Meriden constituency and the previous Solihull constituency, not all.
It is estimated that around 39,091 people in the previous Meriden and Solihull East constituency will be affected by the change in policy. This is based on Feb-24 Pension Credit statistics and 22-23 Winter Fuel Payments statistics (sources below).
This estimation is calculated by subtracting the number of Pension Credit recipients the previous Meriden and Solihull East constituency from the number of Winter Fuel Payment recipients in the previous Meriden and Solihull East constituency. This is essentially the number of Winter Fuel Payment claimants pre-policy change not claiming Pension Credit, as an estimate of those who will no longer receive Winter fuel payment. The Pension Credit data that is used is based on the 2010 Westminster Parliamentary constituencies, not 2024, in order to be comparable with the Winter Fuel Payments statistics.
Also, the above figures do not take into account any potential increase in Pension Credit take-up we might see as a result of the policy change (means testing Winter fuel payments to those on Pension Credit and other means tested benefits). We do not have data on those additional Pension Credit claims by Parliamentary constituencies or local authorities.
The published Pension Credit figures refer to households rather than individuals, so the number of individuals claiming Pension Credit, will be higher. This means that the number of pensioners eligible for Winter Fuel Payment will be higher and that the estimates provided above overstate the number of pensioners not eligible for Winter Fuel Payment following changes in eligibility.
In addition to that, Pension Credit claimants are the majority of those that will be eligible for Winter Fuel Payments, not all. There are other pensioners who are eligible for Winter Fuel Payments (as they claim other means tested benefits) but they are not considered in these figures as it is not possible to do so.
Source:
The Winter Fuel Payments statistics are published here:
Winter Fuel Payment statistics for winter 2022 to 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Pension Credit data is published here: Pension Credit – Data from May 2018
Asked by: Saqib Bhatti (Conservative - Meriden and Solihull East)
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 potential merits of extending the remit of the Tell Us Once service to include the notification of death to (a) banks, (b) utility companies and (c) other organisations outside the public sector.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
There are currently no plans to extend the existing Tell Us Once Service to organisations outside the public sector.