Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she plans to take steps to provide help with high energy costs to people who are receiving non means-tested benefits.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The Government understands the pressures people are facing with the cost of living and has taken further decisive action to support people with their energy bills. The Government has announced unprecedented support within its Growth Plan to protect households and businesses from high energy prices. The Energy Price Guarantee and the Energy Bill Relief Scheme are supporting millions of households and businesses with rising energy costs, and the Chancellor made clear, they will continue to do so from now until April next year.
The consumer saving will be based on usage, but a typical household will save at least £1,000 a year (based on current prices from October). This is in addition to the over £37bn of cost-of-living support announced earlier this year which includes the £400 non-repayable discount to eligible households provided through the Energy Bills Support Scheme.
The £37bn of support also includes more than 8 million pensioner households receiving a one-off payment of £300 alongside the Winter Fuel Payment from November, and 6 million eligible disabled people receiving a one-off Disability Cost of Living Payment of £150 from 20 September.
Also included in the cost-of-living support is the current Household Support Fund in England, which will be providing up to £421m of support to those most in need for the period October 2022 - March 2023.The devolved administrations will receive £79 million through the Barnett formula as usual.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of applications for Housing Benefit in (a) Birmingham and (b) England in the last (i) 12 months, (ii) 3 years and (iii) 5 years.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The information requested for the number of Housing Benefit applications is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of approvals for Housing Benefit for tenants living in supported exempt accommodation in (a) Birmingham, (b) Blackpool, (c) Hull, (d) Bristol and (e) England in the last 12 months.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of applications for Housing Benefit from tenants living in supported exempt accommodation in (a) Birmingham, (b) Blackpool, (c) Hull, (d) Bristol and (e) England in the last 12 months.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of approvals for Housing Benefit in (a) Birmingham and (b) England in the last (i) 12 months, (ii) 3 years and (iii) 5 years.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
Statistics on monthly Housing Benefit on-flows, by country and local authority, from May 2018 to May 2022, are available at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made an assessment of instances of fraud committed by Kickstart scheme gateways.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We embedded a number of controls and checks in the design of the Kickstart Scheme to reduce the risk of fraud and error, including using the Cabinet Office Spotlight tool to support financial checks on applicants. Further information on the Spotlight Tool can be found here.
Where an allegation of fraud is made, or criminal activity suspected, the Department will investigate. If there is sufficient evidence, the Department will refer the case to the Crown Prosecution Service, or Crown Office/Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland, to consider a prosecution.
All Kickstart participants have Employment Contracts, meaning they are entitled to legal protections, and DWP will advise individuals on how to take action in the rare case that the is not resolved through DWP channels.
We are unable to disclose details regarding suspected fraud. If cases are under investigation, releasing any information could prejudice those investigations.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what due diligence her Department conducted on the Kickstart scheme gateways it recommended to employers.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
All Gateways are subject to financial checks by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). These checks included using the Cabinet Office Spotlight Tool which complemented existing pre and post-award checks. Further information on the Spotlight Tool can be found here.
Kickstart District Account Managers, Work Coaches and other officials are encouraged to highlight any concerns they have about any organisation involved in the Kickstart Scheme, including those acting as a Gateway. This would include any concerns about the quality of the Kickstart experience or questions about the suitability of the roles. Issues raised are investigated and where issues are identified DWP will take appropriate action, which may include reducing the number of jobs offered by the organisation or in the most serious cases, rescinding the Grant Agreement entirely.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is obligated to take in the event that a Kickstart scheme gateway closes down.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has established grant agreements between employers and gateways operating through the Kickstart Scheme. These agreements set out the responsibilities of a gateway ceasing to operate. Specifically, a Gateway has a responsibility to notify DWP within two working days of any actual or potential failure to comply with any of their obligations under the Grant Agreement, which includes any administrative, financial or managerial difficulties.
In the event that a Gateway is no longer in a position to deliver on its responsibilities, DWP will provide support to young people and employers. Prior to the closure of Kickstart to further young people on 31st March, these might have included placing a young person in a different Kickstart job, or, in the case of an employer, directing them to another gateway or encouraging them to apply to participate in Kickstart directly.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of Kickstart scheme gateways that have closed down since that scheme began.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We have made no estimate of the number of Gateways who have closed since the scheme began.
Gateways have brought diversity of employment opportunities and volumes of jobs to the Kickstart Scheme and have provided robust employability support for Kickstart participants. More than 900 Gateways have helped us to deliver the Kickstart Scheme.
Gateways are subject to financial checks by the DWP and any concerns regarding a Gateway are investigated. Some Gateways came on board to support a specific group of employers to offer Kickstart jobs. Once the final young person completed their Kickstart job with those employers and the final grant payment is made the department doesn’t necessarily have any further engagement with that Gateway. Other Gateways have had a more rolling approach to adding employers and jobs to their portfolios.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much of the £510 million announced for tackling benefit fraud is (a) new funding and (b) previously allocated funding.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The additional £510m announced on 13th December 2021 is new funding that will enable us to drive down the level of fraud in Universal Credit and recover more debt.
It will support several different methods of fraud detection and prevention, including a targeted review of Universal Credit claims, the development of a new Debt Enforcement Function and further recruitment into the Counter Fraud and Compliance and Debt directorate, so that we can continue to respond quickly and effectively to threats.
This recruitment, which includes funding for around 2,000 trained specialists, will help tackle fraud across a range of benefits, including any Housing Benefit related fraud.
At Spending Review 2021, the Department also secured an additional £103m for fraud and error activity. This funding is enabling DWP to continue key fraud and error detection and prevention work, and secured the completion of our current transformation programme, thus enhancing our ability to prevent and detect fraud and error.