Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the 2 July 2019 research, Cover the cost: restoring local housing allowance rates to prevent homelessness, commissioned by Crisis on 2 July 2019, if her Department will undertake a cost-benefit analysis to assess the potential effect of restoring local housing allowance rates to the level of the cheapest third of local rents.
Answered by Will Quince
We estimate the cost would be about £800 million in 2020/21, excluding any changes in behaviour by tenants and landlords.
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proof of settled status is required for an EEA national who has been granted settled status and is applying for benefits.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Eligibility for income-related (means-tested) benefits, such as Universal Credit, depends on a person’s immigration status in the UK.
EEA nationals who are habitually resident in the UK and have been granted settled status are eligible to access income-related benefits.
Mechanisms are in place between DWP and the Home Office to verify settled status through the Habitual Residence Test Process.
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many of applications for (a) universal credit and (b) job seekers allowance were rejected on the Habitual Residency Test in each of the last five years.
Answered by Alok Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
Long-standing policy has always been eligibility for income-related (means-tested) social security benefits depends on a person’s immigration status in the UK. Claimants must be exercising a legal right to reside and be habitually resident before they are eligible to claim income related benefit. This is assessed through the Habitual Residence Test (HRT), which has been in place since 1994.
Information on the number of JSA claims which failed the Habitual Residence Test are available in “Analysis of Migrants’ Access to Income-Related Benefits”
Information on Universal Credit contracts which have a recorded failed Habitual Residence Test are as follows: 2016/2017 – 800 failed claims, 2017/2018 – 7,600 failed claims and 2018/2019 – 30,700 failed claims, this reflects the increasing caseload on UC since it’s rollout. UC data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only and has not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. The data should therefore be treated with caution. UC cases may be closed for other reasons (for example, “ineligible”) but may have failed the HRT – these are not captured in the estimates above.
Information for JSA claims from 2017/18 is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost. No data was recorded on UC data for HRTs prior to 2016/17
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many jobseekers have made a claim under the Jobcentre Plus Travel Discount scheme via job centres; and what the value was of those claims in the last three years.
Answered by Alok Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
The information requested is not centrally collated in a format that can be easily disaggregated, and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will provide an update on the Government's plans to reform bereavement support payments.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Bereavement Benefits were reformed in April 2017, with the introduction of Bereavement Support Payment. We confirm that we intend to evaluate its impact once there has been enough time for the reforms to fully bed in.
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what information her Department holds on the number of reports of abuse and harassment of staff at jobcentres by location over the last five years.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
DWP takes any form of abuse and harassment of its staff by customers and claimants very seriously and has robust controls in place to mitigate the risk of Unacceptable Customer Behaviour (UCB), nonetheless there will be occasions when it does unfortunately occur. We encourage our people to report each and every instance of unacceptable behaviour and we do take action against the perpetrator, with measures proportionate to the seriousness of the incident.
Information collected includes:
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department plans to publish information on the (a) the number of staff, (b) number of clients seen and (c) the average length of time in processing a claim at each job centre in the UK for each of the last five years.
Answered by Alok Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
There are currently no plans to publish this information at Jobcentre level.
The Department routinely publishes information on its performance on Gov.uk in publications including the DWP Annual Report and Accounts, DWP benefits statistical summaries and DWP single departmental plan:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-annual-report-and-accounts-2016-to-2017
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-statistical-summaries-2017
Stat-Xplore also provides a guided way to explore DWP benefit statistics, currently holding data relating to 16 different benefits/programmes::
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/.
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the planned date for the transition to full service of universal credit is for the London Borough of Waltham Forest.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
As announced by the Secretary of State in his Oral Statement on 23rd November 2017, to accommodate the Universal Credit measures announced in the Budget, it has been necessary to make changes to the rollout schedule.
A revised Universal Credit Rollout Schedule is attached and is also available in the Library.
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will publish the full equality impact assessment on the replacement of existing bereavement benefits by the bereavement support payment.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The Department published an impact assessment in 2014 of the Bereavement Support Payment which was introduced by the Pensions Act 2014.
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, which charities and voluntary sector organisations were consulted on proposed changes to the Widowed Parents' Allowance; and what the results of that consultation were.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The Government published a consultation document in December 2011 entitled Bereavement Benefit for the 21st Century (link below) which sought views on proposals to reform the current system (link below).
We received 50 responses from a variety of organisations including charities and the voluntary sector, and these were summarised in the Government Response published in July 2012 (link below). The organisations that responded are listed in that report.