Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberafan Maesteg)
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 reviewing how postcodes are allocated to weather stations for the purpose of determining the temperature for cold weather payments.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The Met Office review the Cold Weather Payment scheme each year to assess whether the linkages between postcode areas and weather stations remain the best available. The Met Office will be conducting their next review this summer once the current Cold Weather Payment season has ended.
Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberafan Maesteg)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to ensure those eligible for attendance allowance are receiving it.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The department does not hold information on the number of people eligible for Attendance Allowance and not claiming, as it is not possible to accurately estimate what care needs will arise from an illness or disability in each individual.
Information on the availability of Attendance Allowance is already widely available, including online on GOV.UK; from places such as Libraries and Doctors Surgeries; directly from Health Care Professionals who might be supporting those with care needs; and from a range of groups and charities who provide advice and support to elderly people with care needs. DWP continually seeks to improve the information it makes available so as to encourage people to claim Attendance Allowance where they may be entitled.
Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberafan Maesteg)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people who are eligible for attendance allowance are not claiming that benefit.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The department does not hold information on the number of people eligible for Attendance Allowance and not claiming, as it is not possible to accurately estimate what care needs will arise from an illness or disability in each individual.
Information on the availability of Attendance Allowance is already widely available, including online on GOV.UK; from places such as Libraries and Doctors Surgeries; directly from Health Care Professionals who might be supporting those with care needs; and from a range of groups and charities who provide advice and support to elderly people with care needs. DWP continually seeks to improve the information it makes available so as to encourage people to claim Attendance Allowance where they may be entitled.
Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberafan Maesteg)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many cold weather payments have been issued in the SA13 postcode in each since 2019.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The Cold Weather Payment scheme is administered at weather station level rather than any other standard GB geography such as postcode or constituency level. The coverage area for each weather station is determined by the Met Office which assesses the most appropriate weather station for each postcode area. Cold weather payments are triggered when the average temperature recorded at the weather station has been recorded as, or is forecast to be, 0oC or below over seven consecutive days, during the Cold Weather season (November to March).
The Postcode SA13 falls under the weather station St. Athan. St. Athan also covers the following postcode areas, in Table 1, which include postcodes other than SA13.
Table 1 Postcode districts mapped to Weather Stations | |
Weather station | Postcode Districts Covered |
St. Athan | CF3, CF5, CF10-11, CF14-15, CF23-24, CF31-36, CF61-64, CF71-72, NP10, NP18-20, SA10-13. |
Qualifying individuals living in these postcode districts will have received a payment in respect of a seven- day period of Cold Weather.
From 2019/20 up to the current season, 2022/23, there have been 0 Cold Weather Payment triggers for St. Athan weather station. Thus, 0 payments have been made to postcodes within St. Athan weather station since 2019, as outlined in Table 2.
Table 2 Number of payments made to postcodes covering St. Athan weather station | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 |
Number of Payments made | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberafan Maesteg)
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 introducing an identity scheme for people with hidden disabilities.
Answered by Chloe Smith
The Government has no plans to introduce a new national disability identity card. We are aware that some disabled people are actively against having to carry a card which confirms their impairment. Other people who may meet the criteria for the Equality Act 2010 definition of disability do not identify as disabled, yet may require reasonable adjustments.
The Equality Act requires service providers to make adjustments to their practices, policies and procedures for all people who meet its definition of a disabled person, where reasonable.
There are however a number of optional schemes and cards in the UK that have been created to meet particular needs and which give people the choice to use them if they wish, such as the Hidden Disability Sunflower Scheme which discreetly identifies where additional support may be needed and is gaining widespread recognition, and Nimbus Disability’s Access Card which can help when communicating with a business about the types of support or reasonable adjustments that might be needed to access their services.
Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberafan Maesteg)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to support people who have experienced delays in processing new State Pension claims.
Answered by Guy Opperman
We provide support to our customers by communicating at the following stages to keep them fully informed during the claim process: -
Pension
Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberafan Maesteg)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time taken is to process new state pension claims.
Answered by Guy Opperman
For the period August 2020 to August 2021, the average processing time for complex claims was 39 days.
Supporting Information
To Note: This is the latest data available.
We introduced the Get Your State Pension online system in 2018. Around 70-80% of State Pension claims are made via Get Your State Pension and of those 50-60% are cleared the same day, as they can be automatically awarded and put into payment to the customer without any agent intervention. Only the most complex cases are now considered when calculating the average clearance time for a State Pension claim, which means the ‘average’ that we are able to provide is heavily inflated.
Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberafan Maesteg)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of new state pension claimants have experienced delays in processing their claim in (a) the UK, (b) Wales and (c) Aberavon.
Answered by Guy Opperman
This information is not held and is only available at disproportionate cost to the Department.
Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberafan Maesteg)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many children lived in (a) poverty and (b) extreme poverty in (i) Wales and (ii) Aberavon constituency in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Will Quince
National Statistics on the number of children in low income households are published annually in the “Households Below Average Income” publication.
Statistics for the number of children in low income households are not available at combined Local Authority level in this publication because the survey sample sizes are too small to support the production of robust estimates at this geography.
Statistics for the North West region can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-199495-to-201718, “children-hbai-timeseries-1994-95-2017-18-tables” in tables 4.17ts (for relative low income, before and after housing costs) and 4.23ts (for absolute low income, before and after housing costs).