Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential merits of providing early access to the state pension for working aged people with a terminal illness.
Answered by Laura Trott - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Department has not held any such discussions.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to Marie Curie's briefing entitled Dying in Poverty: Improving financial support for terminally ill people with the cost of living, what assessment he has made of that organisation's findings on the potential merits of offering all terminally ill people access to the state pension.
Answered by Laura Trott - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
No assessments have been made on early access to the State Pension for terminally ill people.
Hearing that your illness cannot be cured can be a frightening and devastating experience. For those at the end of their life, the Government’s priority is providing financial support quickly and compassionately. The main way that the Department does this is through special benefit rules, sometimes referred to as “the Special Rules”. These enable people who are nearing the end of their lives to get faster, easier access to certain benefits, without needing to attend a medical assessment, serve waiting periods and in most cases, receive the highest rate of benefit. For many years, the Special Rules have applied to people who have 6 months or less to live and now they are being changed so they apply to people who have 12 months or less to live.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on what evidential basis he lowered the Universal Credit Standard Allowance for people aged under 25.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Universal Credit simplifies the rates of benefit for young people. The rates for those under age 25 are lower than those aged 25 and over to reflect the fact that these claimants are more likely to live in someone else’s household and have lower living costs. It also reflects the lower wages that younger workers typically receive. However, it is acknowledged that some claimants under 25 do live independently, which is why Universal Credit includes separate elements to provide support to claimants for these additional costs.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Universal Credit claimants are aged under 25 and entitled to a (a) housing and (b) child element within their claim by constituency.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
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 ensure that chemical products can move from the UK to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland while remaining compliant with the chemical classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) regulatory framework; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of adopting a more flexible approach to encourage the concept of dual labelling when developing UK CLP policy.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Under the Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation in Great Britain (known as the GB CLP Regulation), the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) acts on behalf of the Government as the Agency.
HSE is considering how to deliver for CLP the requirements outlined in the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill which would facilitate a dual-regulatory regime that gives choice to Northern Ireland businesses and can deal flexibly and durably with any barriers within the UK internal market, alongside robust commitments to protect the EU single market. As part of these considerations HSE will assess the potential impacts of policy decisions on stakeholders but will seek to ensure that the provisions within CLP that protect consumers and workers through clear and easily identifiable labelling are upheld.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many trained safety representatives are qualified to work in the offshore oil and gas industry.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Health and Safety Executive does not collect this data.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if his Department will make an assessment of the effectiveness of the functioning of the Offshore Installations (Safety Representatives and Safety Committees) Regulations 1989 since January 2020.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) published its Workforce Engagement Inspection Guide in 2018. A key objective of the Inspection Guide is to help inspectors to assess compliance with the Offshore Installations (Safety Representatives and Safety Committees) Regulations 1989, SI 971, during their inspections. The Guide was developed by HSE’s Workforce Engagement Specialist Inspector. Since January 2020 to date 41 inspections have been carried out using the Inspection guide.
The inspections assessed compliance against the inspection guide and of those inspections 4 were rated as being good; 29 were broadly compliant and 8 were deemed poor. Where non-compliance issues were found, duty holders were informed by letter of what they needed to do. HSE then monitored progress with them to ensure compliance.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will estimate the number of staff hours required to clear the current backlog of safety critical maintenance work in the offshore oil and gas industry.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) issued a maintenance backlog data request to all offshore production platform duty holders in February 2022, which included a request for remediation plans and timescales. This data was analysed at individual duty holder level and utilised to inform planned interventions with them. HSE will also be repeating its backlog data exercise in February 2023.
HSE’s focus is ensuring that duty holders have credible plans for addressing their safety critical and other maintenance backlogs and holding them to account for delivering the identified actions. Differences in the way duty holders define backlogs and the ongoing nature of the actions being taken to reduce the backlogs mean it is not possible to provide an accurate estimate of the required staff hours to address this.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 17 October 2022 to Question 61899 on Offshore Industry: North Sea, if he will publish the terms of reference for the Asset Integrity Task Group.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In March 2021 Offshore Energy UK (OEUK) arranged a workshop involving representatives from North Sea operators, Suppliers, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to discuss the increasing trend of maintenance backlogs within the offshore sector. This became the Maintenance Backlog Working Group (MBWG). The terms of reference are given in Appendix B of OEUK’s published guidance “OEUK’s Maintenance Backlog Measurement, Interpretation and Management Guideline”. During the coronavirus pandemic it was determined that the MBWG should be the principal asset integrity focus, and it is now part of the Asset Integrity Task Group (AITG).
The AITG has met twice in 2022 with another meeting planned for 30 November 2022.
Duty holders represented on the AITG are BP, Petrofac, CNOOC, Repsol Sinopec, EnQuest, Serica, Equinor, SRCN Solutions Ltd, Harbour Energy, Shell, Ithaca, Spirit Energy, Neptune Energy, TAQA, ODE Asset Management, TotalEnergies, Perenco and Wood.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 17 October 2022 to Question 61899, which duty holders are represented on the Asset Integrity Task Group; and how many times that group has met to date in 2022.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In March 2021 Offshore Energy UK (OEUK) arranged a workshop involving representatives from North Sea operators, Suppliers, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to discuss the increasing trend of maintenance backlogs within the offshore sector. This became the Maintenance Backlog Working Group (MBWG). The terms of reference are given in Appendix B of OEUK’s published guidance “OEUK’s Maintenance Backlog Measurement, Interpretation and Management Guideline”. During the coronavirus pandemic it was determined that the MBWG should be the principal asset integrity focus, and it is now part of the Asset Integrity Task Group (AITG).
The AITG has met twice in 2022 with another meeting planned for 30 November 2022.
Duty holders represented on the AITG are BP, Petrofac, CNOOC, Repsol Sinopec, EnQuest, Serica, Equinor, SRCN Solutions Ltd, Harbour Energy, Shell, Ithaca, Spirit Energy, Neptune Energy, TAQA, ODE Asset Management, TotalEnergies, Perenco and Wood.