Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what training and accreditation are required for members of the Child Maintenance Service specialist caseworker team; how frequently that training is refreshed; and whether its content is developed in consultation with specialist domestic abuse organisations.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Safeguarding is of the utmost importance and is embedded throughout the day-to-day delivery of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). All CMS colleagues are required to complete mandatory domestic abuse training every two years. In the intervening year, colleagues complete a knowledge check, and refresher training is provided where needed. This ensures they maintain the right skills and knowledge when dealing with customers who have experienced domestic abuse. CMS has collaborated with specialist charities and stakeholder organisations to modernise its domestic abuse training so caseworkers can better recognise coercive and controlling behaviour and signpost parents appropriately. The Department continues to work with these stakeholders to review and enhance its guidance, training and signposting resources.
All CMS staff know to refer certain cases to the dedicated Specialist Caseworker team, which provides targeted support for customers experiencing the most challenging or complex domestic abuse situations.
Once the CMS has moved a customer’s case into the Specialist Caseworker team, all inbound calls from that customer will route directly to that team. If the automated call routing cannot identify the customer, their call will go to a different team, but all caseworkers are trained to identify this and will reroute the call to the Specialist Caseworker Team.
CMS has strengthened telephony quality assurance arrangements and provided targeted training for team leaders on service standards, coaching and feedback. These measures are designed to support consistent service delivery and help ensure customers requiring specialist support are identified and transferred appropriately.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what service standards apply to the Child Maintenance Service specialist caseworker team, including standards relating to call waiting times, call-backs, caseworker continuity and the time taken to respond to correspondence.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Safeguarding is of the utmost importance and is embedded throughout the day-to-day delivery of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). All CMS colleagues are required to complete mandatory domestic abuse training every two years. In the intervening year, colleagues complete a knowledge check, and refresher training is provided where needed. This ensures they maintain the right skills and knowledge when dealing with customers who have experienced domestic abuse. CMS has collaborated with specialist charities and stakeholder organisations to modernise its domestic abuse training so caseworkers can better recognise coercive and controlling behaviour and signpost parents appropriately. The Department continues to work with these stakeholders to review and enhance its guidance, training and signposting resources.
All CMS staff know to refer certain cases to the dedicated Specialist Caseworker team, which provides targeted support for customers experiencing the most challenging or complex domestic abuse situations.
Once the CMS has moved a customer’s case into the Specialist Caseworker team, all inbound calls from that customer will route directly to that team. If the automated call routing cannot identify the customer, their call will go to a different team, but all caseworkers are trained to identify this and will reroute the call to the Specialist Caseworker Team.
CMS has strengthened telephony quality assurance arrangements and provided targeted training for team leaders on service standards, coaching and feedback. These measures are designed to support consistent service delivery and help ensure customers requiring specialist support are identified and transferred appropriately.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether customers assigned to the Child Maintenance Service specialist caseworker team are allocated a named caseworker; and, if so, what arrangements are in place to provide continuity when that caseworker is unavailable.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Safeguarding is of the utmost importance and is embedded throughout the day-to-day delivery of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). All CMS colleagues are required to complete mandatory domestic abuse training every two years. In the intervening year, colleagues complete a knowledge check, and refresher training is provided where needed. This ensures they maintain the right skills and knowledge when dealing with customers who have experienced domestic abuse. CMS has collaborated with specialist charities and stakeholder organisations to modernise its domestic abuse training so caseworkers can better recognise coercive and controlling behaviour and signpost parents appropriately. The Department continues to work with these stakeholders to review and enhance its guidance, training and signposting resources.
All CMS staff know to refer certain cases to the dedicated Specialist Caseworker team, which provides targeted support for customers experiencing the most challenging or complex domestic abuse situations.
Once the CMS has moved a customer’s case into the Specialist Caseworker team, all inbound calls from that customer will route directly to that team. If the automated call routing cannot identify the customer, their call will go to a different team, but all caseworkers are trained to identify this and will reroute the call to the Specialist Caseworker Team.
CMS has strengthened telephony quality assurance arrangements and provided targeted training for team leaders on service standards, coaching and feedback. These measures are designed to support consistent service delivery and help ensure customers requiring specialist support are identified and transferred appropriately.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether Child Maintenance Service customers can request assignment to the specialist caseworker team; and what process is followed where such a request is refused.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Safeguarding is of the utmost importance and is embedded throughout the day-to-day delivery of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). All CMS colleagues are required to complete mandatory domestic abuse training every two years. In the intervening year, colleagues complete a knowledge check, and refresher training is provided where needed. This ensures they maintain the right skills and knowledge when dealing with customers who have experienced domestic abuse. CMS has collaborated with specialist charities and stakeholder organisations to modernise its domestic abuse training so caseworkers can better recognise coercive and controlling behaviour and signpost parents appropriately. The Department continues to work with these stakeholders to review and enhance its guidance, training and signposting resources.
All CMS staff know to refer certain cases to the dedicated Specialist Caseworker team, which provides targeted support for customers experiencing the most challenging or complex domestic abuse situations.
Once the CMS has moved a customer’s case into the Specialist Caseworker team, all inbound calls from that customer will route directly to that team. If the automated call routing cannot identify the customer, their call will go to a different team, but all caseworkers are trained to identify this and will reroute the call to the Specialist Caseworker Team.
CMS has strengthened telephony quality assurance arrangements and provided targeted training for team leaders on service standards, coaching and feedback. These measures are designed to support consistent service delivery and help ensure customers requiring specialist support are identified and transferred appropriately.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many non-British national households benefitted from the removal of the two-child benefit cap.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This information is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate costs.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether the introduction of a right to guaranteed hours could reduce access to flexible employment opportunities for young people who are not in education, employment or training.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
With over one million young people not in education, employment and training, this Government will not leave an entire generation of young people behind. The Government is investing an additional £2.5 billion over the next three years into the Youth Guarantee and the Growth and Skills Levy.
This investment will support almost one million young people and create up to 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn, including through expanded network of Youth Hubs, earlier intensive support in Jobs Centres through a new Youth Guarantee Gateway, additional work experience and training opportunities, a £3,000 Youth Jobs Grant and £2,000 apprenticeship hiring payment for employers, and a fully funded six month job for long-term unemployed 18–24-year-olds.
We also recognise the crisis of participation that Alan Milburn has so clearly laid out in his interim report. We will use this interim report to continue to build our reforms and look forward to final recommendations in the Autumn.
The government's Employment Rights Act 2025 is tackling one-sided flexibility partly through a right to guaranteed hours, where the number of hours offered reflects a qualifying worker’s working hours during a reference period.
The government has published a comprehensive assessment of the potential impacts of the zero hours contract measures in the Employment Rights Act 2025. This includes consideration of the potential impact of the right to guaranteed hours on employment for different types of roles or groups in the labour market.
The government is consulting on these measures, and will consider responses before finalising regulations and implementation.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many Child Maintenance Service-paying parents were liable to pay child maintenance of between £0.01 and £7.00 per week at the latest date for which data are available; and of those paying parents, how many were (1) in receipt of Universal Credit, and (2) subject to a work-search requirement under Universal Credit conditionality.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the role of temporary work in helping young people who are not in education, employment or training to gain experience and enter the labour market.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
With over one million young people not in education, employment and training, this Government will not leave an entire generation of young people behind. The Government is investing an additional £2.5 billion over the next three years into the Youth Guarantee and the Growth and Skills Levy.
This investment will support almost one million young people and create up to 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn, including through expanded network of Youth Hubs, earlier intensive support in Jobs Centres through a new Youth Guarantee Gateway, additional work experience and training opportunities, a £3,000 Youth Jobs Grant and £2,000 apprenticeship hiring payment for employers, and a fully funded six month job for long-term unemployed 18–24-year-olds.
We also recognise the crisis of participation that Alan Milburn has so clearly laid out in his interim report. We will use this interim report to continue to build our reforms and look forward to final recommendations in the Autumn.
The government recognises that temporary work can help young people, including those not in education, employment or training (NEET), to gain valuable experience and enter the labour market. Through the Youth Guarantee, the government is expanding access to work experience, training and employment support to help more young people move into work. For example, several Youth Guarantee Trailblazers are connecting young people who are NEET with work placement opportunities to help them gain the experience they need and develop the skills to get sustained employment.
The Employment Rights Act preserves flexibility for genuinely temporary work, including through limited-term contracts. The government is consulting employers, trade unions and wider civil society to ensure the right to guaranteed hours works for businesses and workers.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential impact of excluding zero-hours contracts from the Youth Guarantee on employment opportunities for young people who are not in education, employment or training.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As part of the Government’s investment of an additional £2.5 billion over the next three years in the Youth Guarantee and the Growth and Skills Levy, young people on Universal Credit are benefiting from enhanced support to help them get into employment, apprenticeships, work experience, Sector-based Work Academy Programme, learning or training from their first appointment in the Jobcentre.
Eligible young people can also benefit from the Jobs Guarantee, which will provide a guaranteed paid job offering regular hours of work of up to 25 hours per week for six months at the relevant National Minimum Wage. Participants will receive the same statutory employment rights and protections as other employees, alongside opportunities to develop skills and experience that support progression into sustained employment. The scheme aims to provide meaningful, secure and predictable employment opportunities for eligible young people who have experienced long-term unemployment. By offering a guaranteed paid job with regular hours, the scheme is designed to help the participants to develop the skills and experience they need to progress into sustained employment.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the numbers of non-British nationals claiming Universal Credit.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Figures are routinely published of the number of non ‘Common Travel Area’ (CTA) nationals in the Universal Credit statistics available on GOV.UK.
From the most recently published Universal Credit statistics, there were 8.3 million people on Universal Credit in January 2026, and the percentage of those people by nationality group, compiled from Table 2 of the immigration and nationality data tables, is shown in the table below.
Table 1: Proportion of People on Universal Credit by Nationality group, Great Britain, January 2026
| January 2026 (%) |
CTA - UK, Ireland, Right of Abode | 85% |
EEA (Excluding Ireland) | 7% |
Non-EEA | 6% |
No nationality recorded on digital systems | 2% |
Source: DWP Universal Credit - Immigration Status and Nationality statistics
Notes: