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Written Question
Pensions: Regulation
Tuesday 27th June 2023

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of legislation on private pension schemes for (a) support for pensioners during the cost-of-living crisis and (b) introducing an ethics code in the decision of payments.

Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education

Employers have legal obligations to provide minimum levels of pension provision for certain groups of employees. As long as they comply with those obligations it is up to the individual employer to decide on the nature of the scheme and the exact benefits which are provided.


Written Question
Pensions: EU Countries
Tuesday 27th June 2023

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what comparative assessment his Department has made of the merits of pension regulatory regimes of EU member states.

Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education

We continually engage and learn from international work, including on the latest developments and findings on the pension regimes in EU member states. This routinely informs policy development in the UK.


Written Question
Child Maintenance Service
Monday 19th July 2021

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 7 July 2021 to Question 25157, for what reason a change in earnings for a period of two months is deemed a permanent change and a change in contact arrangements for 14 months is deemed a temporary change by the Child Maintenance Service; and what her Department’s policy is on the length of time that constitutes a (a) temporary and (b) permanent change for the purposes of the Child Maintenance Service.

Answered by Guy Opperman

There are multiple factors considered when taking into account a Paying Parent’s income for a Child Maintenance assessment. The scheme is designed so that liabilities remain consistent over the year, with limited changes to the assessment allowing both parents to budget. Time frames will vary depending on what is being assessed and legislation requires that factors which affect income should be expected to last for the “foreseeable future”.

The Child Maintenance Service follows guidance on when changes should be considered temporary or permanent. These decisions are discretionary and considered on a case by case basis. If a customer is unhappy with the outcome of the decision, they may appeal through a mandatory reconsideration.


Written Question
Child Maintenance Service
Wednesday 7th July 2021

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will provide a definition of the term temporary as used by the Child Maintenance Service.

Answered by Guy Opperman

The Child Maintenance Service uses the term temporary as a definition of a measure which lasts for a limited time. This is opposed to something which is permanent.


Written Question
National Insurance: EEA Nationals
Monday 14th December 2020

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department may issue National Insurance numbers for (a) EU (b) EEA or (c) Swiss nationals who already have settled or pre-settled status.

Answered by Guy Opperman

The department continues to allocate National Insurance Numbers, however, at present this service is currently limited to specific customer groups.

DWP started testing a partial digital solution, on a small scale, in mid-October, to support the issuing of National Insurance Numbers, which is still ongoing. This solution enables collection of the applicant’s data, but not the online verification of their identity.

For those customer groups, where a face to face identity check is required, we are developing and testing alternative identity verification solutions. We recently included EU/EAA and Swiss nationals, who have been granted settled or pre-settled status as part of their EU Settlement Scheme, into the test, as their identity will have been verified, through this process, by the Home Office.


Written Question
National Insurance: Coronavirus
Wednesday 4th November 2020

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress the Government has made on implementing a digital solution to the process of issuing National Insurance numbers.

Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)

We started testing a partial digital solution, on a small scale, in mid-October, to support the issuing of National Insurance Numbers, which is still ongoing. This solution enables collection of the applicant’s data, but not the online verification of their identity.


Written Question
Industrial Health and Safety: Coronavirus
Thursday 2nd July 2020

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many reports relating to covid-19 the Heath and Safety Executive has received in each of the last three months.

Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)

RIDDOR places duties on employers, the self-employed and people in control of work premises (the Responsible Person) to report certain serious workplace accidents, occupational diseases and specified dangerous occurrences (near misses). Reports relate to incidents occurring within Great Britain.

Under RIDDOR, duty-holders are obliged to report cases of Covid-19 when:

  • an unintended incident at work has led to someone’s possible or actual exposure to Covid-19 (reportable as a ‘biological agent’ dangerous occurrence under Regulation 7, Schedule 2 – Section 10);
  • a worker has been diagnosed as having Covid-19 and there is reasonable evidence that it was caused by exposure at work (reportable as an ‘exposure to a biological agent’ case of disease under Regulation 9(b));
  • a worker dies as a result of occupational exposure to Covid-19 and this is confirmed as the likely cause of death by a registered medical practitioner (reportable as a ‘death due to exposure to a biological agent’ case of disease under Regulation 6(2)).

The attached Tables 1 and 2 provide numbers of all Covid-19 related reports i.e. reports of incidents under the RIDDORs (Reporting of Injuries Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013) which fall to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Local Authorities (LA) as enforcing authorities. Table 3 shows the number of Covid-19 workplace concerns reported to HSE.


Written Question
Industrial Health and Safety: Coronavirus
Thursday 4th June 2020

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what additional support her Department is providing to the Heath and Safety Executive to ensure effective regulation of SARS-CoV-2 in workplaces throughout the UK.

Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is playing a crucial role in the Government’s response to covid-19, including its continued work with trade unions, employers and stakeholders to help ensure workplaces are safe environments.

The Government has already announced it has made up to £14 million additional funding available to HSE for extra call centre employees, inspectors and equipment to support their work. HSE working with the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy published guidance on 11th May 2020 on working safely during the coronavirus pandemic.

HSE is funded to deliver its wide-ranging regulatory functions and has also redirected resource to this activity as a priority. In addition, HSE continues to address reported workplace concerns with employers, including those relating to employees with a heighted risk from Covid-19.


Written Question
Health and Safety Executive
Tuesday 2nd June 2020

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many workplace spot checks the Heath and Safety Executive has carried out in each of the last six months.

Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)

The numbers of workplace spot checks the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has carried out in each of the last six months is in the table below:

Year

Month

No. of Proactive Inspections

2019

Dec

624

2020

Jan

898

2020

Feb

1041

2020

Mar

587

2020

Apr

78

2020

1st – 20th May

62

The above data was extracted from HSE’s operational database on 21st May 2020 and is subject to change e.g. the administrative process of recording the information in the database can take up to 10 days.

In March, HSE temporarily suspended proactive visits to sites to allow social distancing measures to be put in place to protect visiting staff. It has since developed plans for resuming proactive site inspections.

The above data excludes investigations of workplace concerns including those relating to COVID-19, where checks have been made to ensure that measures have been put in place to comply with the law.


Written Question
Department for Work and Pensions: ICT
Wednesday 20th May 2020

Asked by: Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party - Stirling)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps have been taken to increase the server capacity for her Department during the covid-19 oubreak.

Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)

We regularly monitor capacity of servers and storage and have not had any issues provisioning additional capacity due to COVID-19.