Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to ensure that the maintenance of Local Housing Allowance at current levels is not having a disproportionately negative impact on people from black, asian or minority ethnic groups.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Secretary of State reviewed Local Housing Allowance rates for 2026/27 at Autumn Budget and a decision was made to maintain LHA rates at their current 2024/25 levels for 2026/27. A range of factors were considered, including rent levels across Great Britain, the wider fiscal context and welfare priorities.
Ministers also considered the equality impacts, including by ethnicity, in line with the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty when taking decisions about policy.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of enabling people over 65 who are not eligible for the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance to access mobility vehicle support.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Disability Living Allowance is aimed at providing additional help with the extra costs of disability to people who are severely disabled early, or relatively early, in life and who as a result, have had fewer opportunities to work, earn and save. Those who become disabled, or develop mobility needs, after reaching the age of 65 will have had no disadvantage on grounds of their disability during their working lives. It is normal for pensions and benefits systems to contain different provisions for people at different stages of their lives, because the help provided needs to reflect varying priorities and circumstances.
We will keep the policies of the department under review, to ensure they meet current needs.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress his department has made with implementing the British Sign Language Act 2022.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The British Sign Language Act 2022 gained Royal Assent in April 2022 and does three things:
On Tuesday 9 May, the members of the British Sign Language (BSL) Advisory Board met for the first time. Establishing the Board is a significant step in the implementation of the Act. The Board’s role is to advise the Government on key issues impacting the Deaf community. The Board’s remit includes: advising on the use of BSL in public communications and policy delivery, including input to the guidance outlined in part 3 of the Act; and advising on how to tackle key issues facing Deaf people, such as how to increase the numbers of BSL interpreters.
Work continues across Government to ensure that the departments named in the schedule to the Act are aware of their reporting duty. The first reporting period runs from 28 June 2022 to 30 April 2023 and departments will report on their use of BSL in public communications after the end of the reporting period. The second meeting of senior officials representing the departments due to report on their use of BSL will take place in May.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
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 potential merits of locating all job centres on (a) affordable and (b) easily accessible public transport routes.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The DWP considers a number of different factors in areas where we expect a demand for our services. The Department seeks properties in both major cities or more rural locations that meet the business requirements for a Jobcentre. We currently have over 800 Jobcentre offices across all constituencies in Great Britain with over 190 new sites opened as part of Plan for Jobs.
Accessible transport links for both colleagues and customers is included in the planning process.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Kickstart scheme placements have been (a) approved and (b) started in (i) Luton North constituency, (ii) Luton and (iii) Bedfordshire.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Delivering the Kickstart Scheme at pace has led to a limited data set which makes it harder to accurately present a snapshot of a smaller geographical area.
We are continuing to develop our data, which may help in sharing local authority level information in due course.
We are able to provide, however, that in the ONS defined region of East of England (which includes Bedfordshire), as of 6 May 2021 around 8,240 jobs had been made available for young people to apply for and around 1,320 jobs started by young people on the Kickstart Scheme.
Although care is taken when processing and analysing Kickstart applications, referrals and starts, the data collected might be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system which has been developed quickly. The management information presented here has not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics, but is provided in the interests of transparency. Work is ongoing to improve the quality of information available for the programme.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions she has had with the Health and Safety Executive on health and safety inspections of supermarket distribution warehouses during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and individual Local Authorities (LA) enforce health and safety law in work premises where the allocation of enforcement responsibility is dependent on the type of work carried out.
Amazon warehouses, where customers’ orders are fulfilled when stored products are picked, packed and shipped, are known as fulfilment centres and are enforced by LAs. There are numerous centres across Great Britain and individual LAs will be better placed to advise on COVID-19 management practices for specific sites. Similarly, supermarket distribution warehouses broadly fall to LA enforcement where goods are stored for retail or wholesale purposes.
As part of its role as the national regulator for health and safety across Great Britain, HSE monitored the effectiveness of COVID-19 risk controls across the supply chain, followed up workers’ concerns in premises enforced by HSE, and recently undertook a joint inspection programme in December 2020 with LAs to cover warehousing and distribution centres. Amazon’s COVID-19 practices were assessed via a virtual head office inspection by HSE and local authority site inspection.
A report on the recent inspection campaign will be issued the week commencing 19th April 2021 to share examples of good practice in relation to COVID risk management.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions she has had with the Health and Safety Executive on health and safety inspections of Amazon distribution warehouses during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and individual Local Authorities (LA) enforce health and safety law in work premises where the allocation of enforcement responsibility is dependent on the type of work carried out.
Amazon warehouses, where customers’ orders are fulfilled when stored products are picked, packed and shipped, are known as fulfilment centres and are enforced by LAs. There are numerous centres across Great Britain and individual LAs will be better placed to advise on COVID-19 management practices for specific sites. Similarly, supermarket distribution warehouses broadly fall to LA enforcement where goods are stored for retail or wholesale purposes.
As part of its role as the national regulator for health and safety across Great Britain, HSE monitored the effectiveness of COVID-19 risk controls across the supply chain, followed up workers’ concerns in premises enforced by HSE, and recently undertook a joint inspection programme in December 2020 with LAs to cover warehousing and distribution centres. Amazon’s COVID-19 practices were assessed via a virtual head office inspection by HSE and local authority site inspection.
A report on the recent inspection campaign will be issued the week commencing 19th April 2021 to share examples of good practice in relation to COVID risk management.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will publish her Department's impact assessment on ending the universal credit uplift.
Answered by Will Quince
The £20 per week uplift to Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit was announced by the Chancellor as a temporary measure in March 2020 to support those facing the most financial disruption as a result of the public health emergency. This measure remains in place until March 2021. As the Government has done throughout this crisis, it will continue to assess how best to support low-income families, which is why we will look at the economic and health context before making any decisions.