Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of a requirement to ensure all venues have (a) toilets accessible to wheelchair users and (b) clear information that there are no accessible toilets for wheelchair users.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Under the Equality Act 2010, businesses that provide goods and services to the public are required not to discriminate against disabled people. The Act also places an anticipatory duty on service providers to make reasonable adjustments to improve access to premises/buildings and services so that disabled customers have the same access to goods and services and are not placed at a substantial disadvantage compared to non-disabled customers. This duty is anticipatory, meaning that service providers are expected to foresee the requirements of disabled people and the reasonable adjustments that may have to be made for them. This includes the provision of disabled toilets and wheelchair access.
The Act recognises the need to strike a balance between the needs of disabled people and the interests of service providers. What is ‘reasonable’ will vary from one situation to another, depending on the circumstances of the case. This is because factors like the practicability of making the adjustment, the cost of the adjustment and the resources available to an organisation, will vary from one situation to another. In the event of a claim of disability discrimination, it will ultimately be for the courts to decide on a case-by-case basis, what reasonable adjustments should be made for a particular disabled service-user, taking into account all relevant circumstances of the case.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of spending a proportion of the funding increase for to the Connect to Work programme in Huntingdonshire on people in that area.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Connect to Work funding will cover all of England and Wales. Huntingdonshire is part of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area for Connect to Work. Cambridge and Peterborough Combined Authority are the Lead Authority (Accountable Body) for this area, working in partnership with Cambridge County Council and Peterborough City Council. The Combined Authority’s Delivery Plan is currently in the final stages of approval, with funding expected to be announced shortly. We understand that the Connect to Work service for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is expected to be open for participants in early 2026.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
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 merits of restoring occupational pensions to people who withdrew them prior to the establishment of the Pension Protection Fund.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
This Government has not made an assessment on the matter.
The Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) existed prior to the Pension Protection Fund, to make payments to members of qualifying DB schemes that started to wind-up between 1 January 1997 and 5 April 2005.
The FAS provides compensation to eligible members of DB pension schemes, such as in cases where the employer has undergone a qualifying insolvency event and the scheme lacks sufficient assets to meet its liabilities. It makes payments to eligible members who are unable to receive the full value of their accrued pension benefits, helping to safeguard retirement income where the scheme itself cannot secure those benefits in full.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the Timms review on the Health Transformation Programme.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Health Transformation Programme is transforming the entire Personal Independence Payment (PIP) service to improve customer experience and efficiency, build trust in our decisions and support people to enter or remain in work. The Programme is working closely with the Timms review and will support the delivery of any service changes following its outcome, to ensure PIP is fair and fit for the future.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many days were lost to sickness absence by civil servants in their Department (a) in total and (b) on average per employee between 5 July 2024 and 4 July 2025.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Sickness absence data for the Civil Service, including departmental breakdowns is published annually, and is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/sickness-absence.
The next update will be for the year ending 31st March 2025.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent progress she has made in establishing the jobs and careers service.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We are reforming Jobcentre Plus and creating a new service across Great Britain that will enable everyone to access support to find good, meaningful work, and support to help them to progress in work, including through an enhanced focus on skills and careers. We are taking a test and learn approach to developing the new service including incorporating the learnings from other tests and trials underway. We will continue our work with local government, including Strategic Authorities, and Devolved Governments as we design, test, and trial the service.
Earlier this year we launched our first Jobs and Careers Service Pathfinder based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. The Pathfinder is our first step in testing elements of the new service based on the 5 pillars set out within the Get Britain Working White Paper that underpin the delivery of the new Jobs and Careers Service. It will also look at how the new service can integrate with other local services. This will support us to develop a new service that is locally tailored and embedded, designed to meet the different needs of local labour markets, local people and local employers. Further Pathfinders, including ones that are focused on support for young people and those with health conditions, will be launched this year.
We have also started testing a new Get Britain Working Coaching Academy. Once in place, this will offer further training for a range of our colleagues to deliver high-quality coaching conversations for customers, focused on goal setting and action planning, as part of our commitment to enhancing the way we interact with people. We currently have two large scale trials in progress testing changes to how we currently operate. The first, to test providing support for people by telephone and video as well as face to face appointments. The second, to test whether meeting unemployed people less frequently in a Jobcentre would have an impact on their work outcomes and whether this approach is more beneficial for particular groups. We will incorporate learnings from these and other tests and trials to inform the design of the new service and how the new service could operate differently.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the forthcoming Timms Review will include the needs of veterans in its scope.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Veterans, depending on their needs, can access a variety of support including PIP, the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS), the Guaranteed Income Payment (GIP), and the Armed Forces Independence Payment (AFIP). No changes are proposed to the Armed Forces Independence Payments.
The government is committed to ensuring that Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is a non-means tested cash benefit which is there for people, now and into the future. That is why we have launched a wider review of the PIP assessment as a whole, to make sure it is fair and fit for the future in a changing world and helps support disabled people to achieve better health, higher living standards and greater independence.
My officials will work with their counterparts in the Office for Veterans’ Affairs (OVA) to ensure they are kept informed of the Timms Review, and its deliberations, as the review progresses in the coming year.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many PIP claimants in Huntingdon constituency will no longer qualify for the PIP daily living component under proposed changes to the qualifying criteria.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As I made clear in my statement to the House, Hansard, 1 July, col 219, any changes to PIP eligibility will come after a comprehensive review of the benefit, which I am leading, and which will be co-produced with disabled people, the organisations that represent them, clinicians, experts, MPs and other stakeholders, so a wide range of views and voices are heard. This review aims to ensure that the PIP assessment is fair and fit for the future. The review is expected to conclude in autumn 2026.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, which body designates a location as a Control of Major Accident Hazard site.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
COMAH requires dutyholders to take all measures necessary to prevent and mitigate the effects of major accidents involving dangerous substances which can cause serious damage/harm to people and or the environment.
COMAH mainly affects chemical and downstream petrochemical and oil industries, but also includes some storage activities, explosives sites, nuclear sites, and other industries, where quantities of dangerous substances above the thresholds identified in the regulations are kept or used. The COMAH Regulations differ from other Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 relevant statutory provisions, in that they set out to protect both people and the environment from harm. Environmental matters are regulated by the relevant environmental government agencies who work with HSE or Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to form the relevant COMAH Competent Authority (CA) for each COMAH establishment.
An ‘establishment’ is defined as the whole location (site) under the control of an operator where a dangerous substance is present in a quantity equal to or in excess of the quantity listed in schedule 1 of the regulations. The regulations place legal duties on such an establishment to determine if their site is subject to COMAH based on their inventory. It is the duty of the operator to determine whether the site has COMAH status and if it does, to notify HSE accordingly.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what criteria the Health and Safety Executive uses to designate a location as a Control of Major Accident Hazard site.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
COMAH requires dutyholders to take all measures necessary to prevent and mitigate the effects of major accidents involving dangerous substances which can cause serious damage/harm to people and or the environment.
COMAH mainly affects chemical and downstream petrochemical and oil industries, but also includes some storage activities, explosives sites, nuclear sites, and other industries, where quantities of dangerous substances above the thresholds identified in the regulations are kept or used. The COMAH Regulations differ from other Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 relevant statutory provisions, in that they set out to protect both people and the environment from harm. Environmental matters are regulated by the relevant environmental government agencies who work with HSE or Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to form the relevant COMAH Competent Authority (CA) for each COMAH establishment.
An ‘establishment’ is defined as the whole location (site) under the control of an operator where a dangerous substance is present in a quantity equal to or in excess of the quantity listed in schedule 1 of the regulations. The regulations place legal duties on such an establishment to determine if their site is subject to COMAH based on their inventory. It is the duty of the operator to determine whether the site has COMAH status and if it does, to notify HSE accordingly.