Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential impact on the educational attainment of young adult carers aged 16 to 24 of the eligibility criteria for carer's allowance that a person must not be studying for 21 hours or more.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department for Work and Pensions does not hold information on the educational attainment of young adult carers.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he has made an assessment of the potential benefits to carers in Newport West of increasing the Carer's Allowance to £93 a week.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government continues to protect the value of benefits paid to carers whilst also spending record amounts in real terms.
The level of Carer’s Allowance is protected by uprating it each April in line with inflation as measured by the CPI for the previous September. The purpose of benefit uprating is to ensure that the value of benefits stays in line with the general level of prices. From April 2024, the Carer’s Allowance payment was increased to £81.90. Since 2010, the rate of Carer’s Allowance has increased from £53.90 to £81.90 a week, providing an additional £1,500 a year for carers.
Real terms expenditure on Carer’s Allowance in 2024/25 is forecast to be £4.1 billion. Between 2024/25 and 2028/29 real terms expenditure on Carer’s Allowance is forecast to rise by 12% - around £500 million. By 2028/29, the Government is forecast to spend just over £4.5 billion a year on Carer’s Allowance.
As well as Carer’s Allowance, carers have access to the full range of social security benefits. For example, carers on Universal Credit can receive around an additional £2,400 a year through the Carer Element.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an estimate of the cost to the Exchequer of exempting young adult carers aged 16 to 24 in further education from the 21-hour rule; and what the budget for carer's allowance is for the 2023-24 financial year.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It is not possible to provide such an estimate as there is no collated figure on the number of full-time students who are also providing unpaid care. And even if there were, DWP would not know how many were potentially eligible for Carer’s Allowance and could meet the basic eligibility criteria (including on the number of hours of care they were providing and for whom, and whether they were undertaking any work etc).
DWP is forecast to have spent £3.7 billion on Carer’s Allowance in 2023/24.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of people affected by (a) respiratory and (b) fatigue conditions who may have their Universal Credit awards changed under the recently announced Work Capability Assessment reforms.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In November last year we announced changes to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) criteria, to deliver the right outcomes and reflect changes in work since the criteria were last comprehensively reviewed in 2011.
Changes to the WCA activities and descriptors will be implemented nationally no earlier than 2025. The majority of existing Universal Credit or Employment and Support Allowance claimants will not be affected by the WCA changes if they have already been assessed as having limited capability for work and work-related activity.
With these changes to the WCA criteria, 424,000* fewer people will be assessed as having limited capability for work and work-related activity by 2028-29 and will receive personalised support to help them move closer to employment. A further 33,000* individuals will be found fit for work by 2028-2029 and will receive more intensive support to search for and secure work than would be the case under the current WCA rules.
Estimates are not based on specific conditions because the WCA considers the impact that a person’s disability or health condition has on their ability to work, not the condition itself.
We will publish an Impact Assessment in due course.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Wansbeck)
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 (a) allowing people that are moving from legacy benefits to Universal Credit to use a countersignature as proof of ID and (b) opening Job Centres on (i) evenings and (ii) weekends for people who are in full-time employment.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Countersignatures or vouching can be used to verify an identity as an exception where the customer does not have any other method to prove who they are. This method is more time consuming for both the customer and agent and we have found that the majority of our customers can meet the identify verification criteria.
A number of our Jobcentres across the network already offer a Saturday service. We do not offer evening appointments, but it is important to emphasise that we have a number of different mechanisms through which customers can access our services; for example, through our Universal Credit (UC) system which is a digital platform where customers can leave messages on their journal to update UC agents on their current circumstances. A number of our service lines also offer telephony services into the evening.
Asked by: Wendy Chamberlain (Liberal Democrat - North East Fife)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what guidance his Department provides to work coaches on the flexible work fund; and what steps he is taking to promote uptake of that funding.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department provides comprehensive guidance which is regularly updated to support our Work Coaches use of the Flexible Support Fund (FSF). We are currently reviewing our guidance to increase both usage and clarity of FSF.
We have recently promoted the availability of FSF on Gov.uk specifically in relation to Upfront Child Care costs Universal Credit childcare costs - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: David Linden (Scottish National Party - Glasgow East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 15 April 2024 to Question 20383 on State Retirement Pensions: Women, whether his Department received the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman's provisional views on injustice and remedy experienced due to maladministration in communication about the 1995 Pensions Act in November 2023.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP received the PHSO’s provisional views for comment in November 2023.
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, whether people in receipt of a letter notifying them of a postponed PIP reassessment are counted as awaiting a PIP (a) assessment and (b) reassessment.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
There are still some claimants in receipt of Adult DLA who are yet to be reassessed. These cases are classed as awaiting PIP ‘reassessment’. DLA payments will continue until they are invited to claim PIP, and we have not contacted anyone on DLA to inform them of any postponement.
There are claimants who have made a new claim to PIP but not yet received a decision. A proportion of these will be with the Assessment Provider and counted as awaiting ‘assessment’. No one in this category would receive a letter indicating their assessments is postponed, unless there are unusual circumstances, and the Provider needs to re-arrange a specific appointment for example.
There are claimants already in receipt of PIP whose award is due to end (or has ended). Some cases are yet to be reviewed and would be counted as awaiting ‘review’. Some cases have been referred to the Assessment Provider and would therefore be counted as awaiting ‘assessment’. Where appropriate, we write to claimants to let them know the process is ongoing and we are extending their award, but we do not inform claimants that their review or assessment is postponed.
Asked by: Liz Kendall (Labour - Leicester West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on what evidential basis he stated to The Telegraph on 20 March 2024 that GPs were signing people off work for feeling down and bluesy.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In his interview with The Telegraph on 20 March 2024, the Secretary of State set out the challenges we are facing with tackling long-term sickness related economic inactivity, particularly due to mental health.
The Secretary of State gave an example of why someone might go to their GP for a fit note, for a mental health condition. The figure that 94% of fit notes issued were ‘Not fit for work’ refers to all fit notes issued by GP practices in England between October 2022 - September 2023.
Of the fit notes issued by GP practices in England between October 2022 – September 2023 with a known diagnosis, 37% are for mental and behavioural disorders.
This Government is committed to reforming the fit note to ensure that people get timely access to work and health support, in turn reducing sickness absence and improving health outcomes.
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 his Department has made an estimate of how many people entitled to the Employment and Support Allowance did not claim it in (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020 and (d) 2021.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Estimates for the number of entitled non-recipients and caseload take-up are available for income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Income Support (IS) up to financial year 2018/19. These can be found here. Figures for 2018/19 were affected by no new claims for income-related ESA and IS from December 2018 as a result of Universal Credit rollout. No figures have been published for ESA/IS since 2018/19 due to the roll out of Universal Credit.
No estimates of the volume of entitled non-recipients of New Style (contributory) ESA have been made.