Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average value was of an underpayment of the State Pension due to incorrectly updated National Insurance records in the 2022-23 financial year.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This response covers both missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) and UC National Insurance issues.
The exercise to correct National Insurance records for those individuals impacted by errors in their HRP record is underway. The HRP corrections exercise started with HMRC dispatching letters in late 2023. Cases subsequently notified from HMRC started being processed in DWP in early 2024.
In the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts 2022-2023, the central estimate value of an underpayment was £5,000 for alive cases above state pension age and £3,000 for deceased cases.
We intend to publish an update on the exercise in this year’s Annual Report and Accounts.
DWP has corrected the UC data issue for the cases impacted for the tax years up to and including the tax year 2022/2023. This data has been shared with HMRC. As HMRC updates NI records, these updates are sent to DWP. Any State Pension entitlement will be reassessed, and any underpayment addressed accordingly.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many staff in his Department are responsible for manually updating records relevant to eligibility for the State Pension.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This information is only available at disproportionate cost to The Department for Work & Pensions as the Department does not have a business requirement for this information to be retained.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he plans to extend (a) member and (b) trade union representation to the Board of the Pension Protection Fund.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
There is no legal requirement for the Board of the Pension Protection Fund to include member or trade union representation, and there are no plans to extend representation to these groups.
The Pension Protection Fund does, however, have Member Panels – which Board members are invited to attend – to enable members to feed in views on the service offered and thoughts about changes that could be made in the future.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people were underpaid the State Pension due to incorrectly updated National Insurance records in the 2022-23 financial year; and what the total amount is that these people are owed.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This response covers both missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) and UC National Insurance issues.
The exercise to correct National Insurance records for those individuals impacted by errors in their HRP record is underway. The HRP corrections exercise started with HMRC dispatching letters in late 2023. Cases subsequently notified from HMRC started being processed in DWP in early 2024.
In the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts 2022-2023, the central estimate was around 187,000 cases who may have an underpayment of State Pension and for whom we expect to correct, with a total underpayment estimate of £1,043 million.
We intend to publish an update on the exercise in this year’s Annual Report and Accounts.
DWP has corrected the UC data issue for the cases impacted for the tax years up to and including the tax year 2022/2023. This data has been shared with HMRC. As HMRC updates NI records, these updates are sent to DWP. Any State Pension entitlement will be reassessed, and any underpayment addressed accordingly.
Asked by: Pat McFadden (Labour - Wolverhampton South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the policy paper entitled Transforming for a digital future: 2022 to 2025 roadmap for digital and data, updated on 29 February 2024, when his Department first assessed each of the red-rated legacy IT systems in his Department to be red-rated.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP has mature, industry standard mechanisms for assessing the risk of its core IT systems which has been implemented and running for decades. The first time DWP reported figures to the cross-government initiative led by CDDO was November 2022.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)
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 carers are made aware when they have exceeded the threshold for claiming carer's allowance.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP remains focussed and passionate about ensuring that the experience for our DWP customers is at the forefront of the decisions that we make, the processes we deliver, and the improvements that we design.
We have made it easier for customers to contact DWP via the channel that makes the most sense for them. DWP customers can report change of circumstances by telephone, letter, and online via GOV.UK which outlines the routeway of how a customer should notify DWP for each benefit where changes occur. This includes the use of Universal Credit Journal to report changes directly to the appropriate benefit affected where earnings increase or decrease accordingly.
For customers seeking advice on Carer’s Allowance (CA) entitlement, GOV.UK provides detail on eligibility. The CA threshold for earnings is £151 a week from April 2024, after tax, National Insurance, and expenses.
Following a successful claim to CA customers are issued with an ‘award letter’ which includes a reminder that ‘You must tell us if your earnings or expenses change.” This helps to ensure that their CA claim runs smoothly, and the earnings threshold for claiming Carer's Allowance is not exceeded.
As benefit and pension rates are uprated, CA customers are further issued with new benefit rate ‘uprating letters’ which also include reminders to report changes in circumstances.
For irregular earners, CA work closely with our customers to ensure CA is only paid for the periods when the customer’s earnings fluctuate and are below the earnings limit. In this way, this should ensure that CA is not overpaid, as information is obtained from the customer for set periods of time to ensure CA is paid correctly for that period.
As our customers rightly expect, DWP is committed to continuous improvement, and we have many mechanisms in place to measure, and analyse the experience of our customers, providing DWP with a rich source of feedback that helps us to review and improve our services.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what information his Department holds on the number of economically active individuals there were (a) in total and (b) with self-reported sight problems in England in 2022-23.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The information requested can be found in the table below.
Labour market status by main or secondary long-term health condition,
16 to 64, England, 2022/23
Labour market status | Total | Difficulty in seeing |
Total | 35,038,400 | 487,200 |
Economically active | 27,551,700 | 238,800 |
Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) – unpublished
Notes:
Numbers are rounded to the nearest 100.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)
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 increasing the earnings threshold for Carer's Allowance in-line with the National Living Wage for financial year 2024-25.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The weekly earnings limit for Carer’s Allowance has just increased from £139 to £151 net earnings per week, in line with the increase Average Weekly Earnings of 8.5%. Successive Governments have taken the same approach to the Carer’s Allowance earnings limit and increased it when it is warranted and affordable. The earnings limit has increased by one half since 2010.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will respond to the report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Women’s State Pension age: our findings on injustice and associated issues laid before Parliament on 21 March.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
In laying the report before Parliament at the end of March, the Ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House, and a further update to the House will be provided once the report's findings have been fully considered.
Asked by: John Penrose (Conservative - Weston-super-Mare)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when he plans to respond to the correspondence of (a) 28 December 2023, (b) 25 January and (c) 22 February 2024 from the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare, relating to delays in actioning Pension Credit.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Departmental officials replied to your correspondence of 28 December 2023 and 25 January on 16 January and 21 February respectively. I replied to the hon. Member’s letter of 22 February on 22 April.