Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of pausing the creation of new Carer’s Allowance overpayment debts until the conclusion of the independent review.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Overpayments have caused significant anxiety for some people. It is important to take the time to review what happened independently, to establish what exactly what went wrong and assess how to put things right. We will await the findings of the independent review being conducted by Liz Sayce. The review is not a substitute for legal proceedings and the existence of the review does not prejudice any business-as-usual activity by DWP.
We carefully balance our duty to the taxpayer to recover overpayments with safeguards in place to manage repayments fairly. Carers have a responsibility to ensure they are entitled to benefits and to inform the DWP of any changes in their circumstances that could impact their award. Support remains in place with DWP’s Debt Management Service available to speak to anyone who has had an overpayment about the terms of their repayment.
Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to her Department's Green Paper entitled Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working, published on 18 March 2025, and report entitled Spring Statement 2025 health and disability benefit reforms - Impacts, published on 26 March 2025, when she plans to publish an impact assessment of the effect of welfare reforms in Wales.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Information on the impacts of the “Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper” will be published in due course, with some information already published alongside the Spring Statement.
Future publications will include some information on people in Wales affected. A further programme of analysis to support development of the proposals in the Green Paper will be developed and undertaken in the coming months.
Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made, using the same static microsimulation model as in the Spring Statement 2025 health and disability benefit impact assessment, of the number of additional (a) people and (b) children who will be in (i) relative and (ii) absolute poverty after housing costs in Wales in 2029-30 as a result of modelled changes to social security, compared to baseline projections.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The government's impact assessment regarding Health and Disability Reform is available at Spring Statement 2025 health and disability benefit reforms – Impacts
These estimates have been made at Great Britain level. It is not possible to provide figures for Wales because the static microsimulation model uses survey data and sample sizes are not large enough to provide robust estimates.
Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the (a) number of PIP recipients and (b) average PIP award amount received each month is in each (i) local authority area and (ii) constituency in Wales for the most recent period for which data is available.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Data on Personal Independence Payment (PIP) can be found on Stat Xplore. The requested data can be found in the ‘PIP Cases with Entitlement from 2019’ dataset. You can use the ‘Month’ filter to select the latest data available. You can filter by Local Authority and Constituency in Wales by using the ‘Geography’ filter to select either ‘National – Regional – LA – OAs’ or ‘Westminister Parliamentary Constituency 2024’ and to select Wales you will need to filter by ‘DWP policy ownership’ and then select ‘England and Wales’ and then ‘Wales’.
To look at the average award amounts, you can use the ‘Measures’ filter to select ‘Financial Award’ to get the award amount received.
You can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user and, if needed, you can access guidance on how to extract the information required.
Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of PIP recipients in (a) Wales, (b) England and (c) the UK live in post-industrial areas.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Data on the proportion of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) recipients in each region broken down by areas can be found on Stat-Xplore. There is no official definition of post-industrial areas for use in official statistics. This recent article published by the House of Lords Library references academic research which has produced a working definition of former industrial areas, which may be of use.
The PIP recipients in (a) Wales and (b) England can be found in the ‘PIP Cases with Entitlement from 2019’ dataset. Figures for England and Wales can be broken down by Census Output Area 2011 to the Local Authority level using the categories under ‘DWP policy ownership’ within the ‘National - Regional - LA – OAs' variable.
You can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user, and if needed, you can access guidance on how to extract the information required.
The Department for Work and Pensions only administers PIP in England and Wales and is therefore unable to provide figures for (c) the UK. In Scotland, Adult Disability Payment (ADP) has replaced PIP from summer 2022 and in Northern Ireland, PIP is administered by the Department for Communities.
Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of the population of (a) Wales, (b) England and (c) the UK received (i) PIP, (ii) Disability Living Allowance, (iii) Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity and (iv) attendance allowance in the most recent period for which data is available.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Table 1 below contains the proportion of the population of England and Wales receiving Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Disability Living Allowance (DLA), Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity (LCWRA) and Attendance Allowance (AA).
Table 1: The percentage of the population of England and Wales receiving the different disability benefits
| England | Wales |
PIP | 5% | 8% |
DLA | 2% | 2% |
LCWRA | 2% | 3% |
AA | 2% | 3% |
The Department for Work and Pensions only administers PIP in England and Wales and is therefore unable to provide figures for the UK. In Scotland, Adult Disability Payment (ADP) has replaced PIP from summer 2022 and in Northern Ireland, PIP is administered by the Department for Communities.
Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment on the potential merits of reviewing Universal Credit rates to provide a protected minimum amount of support based on the cost of essentials.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
There are currently no plans to make such an assessment.
The Government recognises the critical role Universal Credit has to play in tackling poverty and making work pay and has already taken steps to help those in need.
The Fair Repayment Rate, to be introduced from April, will reduce Universal Credit overall cap on deductions from 25% to 15%. This measure will help approximately 1.2 million of the poorest households benefit by an average of £420 a year.
Benefit rates are reviewed each year, increasing by 6.7% in April 2024 and by a further 1.7% from April 2025, in line with inflation. Around 5.7 million Universal Credit families are forecast to benefit from uprating in financial year 2025 to 2026, with an average annual gain for a family estimated to be £150.
Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions she has had with the Welsh Government on the potential merits of devolving powers related to the administration of the social security system to Wales.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Secretary of State has not had any discussions with the Welsh Government about the devolution of the administration of the social security system to Wales.
The Government’s commitments on further devolution were outlined in our manifesto. We have no plans to devolve the administration of social security to Wales.
Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero on data matching to establish a social tariff for vulnerable customers.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Data matching is being used effectively to provide financial help with energy bills to over three million households this winter through the Warm Home Discount.
DWP officials are working closely with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and the cross-government Child Poverty Taskforce to explore options for enhanced data sharing and data matching to support the future development of policy to reduce fuel poverty.
Asked by: Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru - Caerfyrddin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Written Statement of 30 October 2024 on Social Security, HCWS175, what estimate has she made of the number of additional welfare recipients affected by the benefit cap from April 2025 in (a) Wales and (b) the UK.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
No estimate has been made.