Asked by: Helen Whately (Conservative - Faversham and Mid Kent)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the expenditure on the Timms Review of Personal Independence Payment is, including payments to external contractors and panel members.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Members of the Timms Review steering group will be paid at a rate of £300 a day, with an expected time commitment of up to 5 days a month. The Review’s two external co-chairs, who were appointed in October 2025, are paid at a rate of £400 a day, with the same expected time commitment. In addition to their fees, members of the steering group and the co-chairs will be reimbursed for any reasonable expenses, including travel, accommodation and the costs of any accessibility requirements required in the course of their work on the Review.
This approach is to remove financial barriers to participation, ensuring no one is excluded due to cost, and is based on strong feedback from disabled people and other experts.
The Department also put in a contract with The Public Service Consultants (PSC) to support the Review. This is the first time that the Government has undertaken co-production on this scale, and we want to ensure we have the expertise to get it right. The contract was signed by the Department on 29th December 2025. To date, there have been no payments through this contract to them as external contractors.
Asked by: Damian Hinds (Conservative - East Hampshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what capacity his Department has made available for Work Capability Assessments in the next six months; and what the backlog of cases is.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
During the second half of 2024, DWP experienced a much higher level of demand for new Work Capability Assessments (WCA) than envisaged. As a result, 34,000 reassessments built up from individuals reporting a change in their condition before May 2025. We have worked with suppliers to rapidly increase capacity to clear this, including by accelerating the recruitment and training of additional assessors. As of 31 January 2026, 14,000 of these cases remain, and we expect the remainder to be cleared in the coming months.
In the meantime, claimants awaiting a reassessment will continue to receive their current rate. Where a reassessment leads to entitlement to a higher rate of benefit, that rate will be backdated accordingly.
Please note:
Asked by: Daniel Francis (Labour - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions he has with the Secretary of State for Business and Trade on the number of wheelchair accessible vehicles that are purchased through the Motability Scheme are produced in the United Kingdom.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Secretary of State regularly meets with colleagues across government to discuss a range of issues.
Motability Operations, an independent commercial company which delivers the Motability Scheme, will continue to prioritise customer needs, ensuring vehicles remain affordable and that support for wheelchair accessible vehicles and specialist adaptations remain at the heart of the Scheme.
Motability Operations has announced plans to support the government’s Modern Industrial Strategy. The number of British-made vehicles purchased by the Scheme will reach 25% by 2030, with an ambition of 50% of vehicles registered on the Scheme being made in the UK by 2035.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 help support adults who missed extended periods of education due to medical conditions they experienced as children.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We are investing in education and skills training for adults through the Adult Skills Fund (ASF), spending £1.4 billion in the 2025/26 academic year. The ASF fully funds or co-funds skills provision for eligible adults aged 19 and above from pre-entry to level 3, to support them to gain the skills they need for work, an apprenticeship or further learning. This includes a statutory entitlement to fully funded qualifications for 19 to 23 year olds who don’t have either a level 2 or 3 qualification which may be relevant for learners who missed education due to medical conditions they experienced as children.
As of August 2025, approximately 68% of the ASF is devolved to 12 Strategic Authorities and the Greater London Authority. These authorities are responsible for the provision of ASF-funded adult education for their residents and allocation of the ASF to providers. For learners in Ashfield, the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) decides how to make best use of their ASF to meet their local needs beyond four statutory entitlements, including which courses are funded and the eligibility criteria.
By honouring our commitments to combine and further devolve adult skills funding, we give those with local knowledge the power they need to make decisions that are best for their areas.
The ASF also funds learning providers to help adult learners to overcome barriers which prevent them from taking part in learning. This includes Learner Support, to support learners with a specific financial hardship, and Learning Support to meet the additional needs of learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities.
In relation to access to higher education, all higher education providers registered with the Office for Students that intend to charge higher level tuition fees must have an Access and Participation Plan (APP) approved by the Office for Students. APPs articulate how higher education providers will improve equality of opportunity for underrepresented groups.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to support training and skills pathways for British manufacturing industries.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP works closely with industry bodies such as Make UK, the Manufacturing Technologies Association and the Institute for Grocery Distributors to support jobseekers to better understand the many career opportunities available in manufacturing.
DWP also promotes pathways into manufacturing to jobseekers, including skills interventions such as Sector-based Work Academy Programmes (SWAPs) and Skills Bootcamps, alongside paid employment routes such as Apprenticeships. Between April 2021 and December 2025, DWP delivered 16,080 SWAP starts in the manufacturing sector.
Asked by: Helen Whately (Conservative - Faversham and Mid Kent)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Universal Credit overpayments arising from official error were identified in each month since 5 July 2024.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The department publishes estimates of the numbers of official error overpayments, available here: Fraud and error in the benefit system: financial year 2024 to 2025 estimates
Asked by: Manuela Perteghella (Liberal Democrat - Stratford-on-Avon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of recent changes to Apprenticeship Levy funding on Level 7 Senior Leader apprenticeships.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
I refer the hon. Member to the answer of 13 June 2025 to Question 57098.
Asked by: Jayne Kirkham (Labour (Co-op) - Truro and Falmouth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of reducing public funding for Level 7 apprenticeships for learners over the age of 21 on access to advanced training in marine engineering, naval architecture and marine surveying.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
I refer the hon. Member to the answer of 13 June 2025 to Question 57098.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department has made a recent evaluation of the effectiveness of the under-occupation deduction policy for social rented housing.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department has not recently evaluated the effectiveness of the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy.
Information on the number of households subjected to the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy, by nations and regions, is available on Stat-Xplore via the Housing Benefit and Universal Credit official statistics (https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/). The information can be found in the Households on Universal Credit dataset, and the Housing Benefit – Data from April 2018 dataset, and are currently available to August 2025.
Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest, and if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required. There is also a Universal Credit Official Statistics: Stat-Xplore user guide.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many consolatory payments were made to (a) paying and (b) receiving parents by the Child Maintenance Service in each of the last three years.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
The department hold records of how many consolatory payments were authorised for Child Maintenance Service customers. This information is provided in the table. We are unable to supply a breakdown of payments made to paying and receiving parents without additional work at disproportionate cost.
Year | No. of consolatory payments authorised |
2022/2023 | 2107 |
2023/2024 | 2634 |
2024/2025 | 2189 |