Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
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 reducing the Universal Credit taper rate.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In November 2021, The Government reduced the taper rate from 63% to 55%. There are no current plans to further reduce the taper, however this will be kept under review.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will publish a further equalities impact assessment for the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill relating to third party data gathering.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The department has assessed the impact of the third-party data measure in the regulatory impact assessment scrutinised and green-rated by the Regulatory Policy Committee. This was published on the 27th November 2023 as part of the supporting documentation for the Data Protection and Information Bill and is available here: Data Protection and Digital Information Bill: supporting documents - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
The department has fulfilled all the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) as set out in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 and in line with our statutory duty keeps the impact of this measure on groups with protected characteristics under continuous review.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many subject access requests her Department has (a) received and (b) responded to within the statutory limit in the last five years.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
In replying to the Parliamentary Question, I have taken the “last five years” to refer to the period 1/9/2017 to 30/9/2022 inclusive.
Prior to GDPR coming into force on 25/5/2018, Subject Access Requests (SARs) were actioned by Local Data Disclosure Officers at District level.
Therefore, there is no DWP MI available regarding the receipt or clearance of SARs prior to this date.
From 25/5/2018, the SAR process in DWP was centralised. However, the administration of SARs did not start to transition to the eCase software until July 2018, and further SARs in respect of Compensation Recovery Unit only were managed by a separate team at that time. Therefore, full and/or accurate MI is not available for this period, nor is the information still available to retrospectively create it due the information retention period.
From December 2018, DWP commenced monthly reporting of SAR performance to the ICO. Full and accurate MI is available from this date. Therefore, the following information relates to SARs received or completed from 1/12/2018 to 30/09/2022 inclusive.
Year | From | To | SARs Received | SARs | SARs | SAR's Closed NRN |
2018 | 01/12/2018 | 31/12/2018 | 3404 | 2635 | 1959 | 379 |
2019 | 01/01/2019 | 31/12/2019 | 55438 | 49266 | 39102 | 5057 |
2020 | 01/01/2020 | 31/12/2020 | 38849 | 33657 | 24197 | 5971 |
2021 | 01/01/2021 | 31/12/2021 | 34884 | 26937 | 23611 | 9866 |
2022 | 01/01/2022 | 30/09/2022 | 25031 | 18409 | 16775 | 4999 |
Not all Subject Access Requests received will progress to be processed & records released. Some requests require further clarification to verify the identity of the requester. Where this is not provided the SAR is not validated and will be Closed NRN (No Response Necessary). Also, other requests may later be identified as not being a SAR, but for other areas of DWP. These will also be Closed NRN. I have therefore included the volume of SARS that were Closed NRN over the same period.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will reinstate the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit in the context of 9 per cent inflation and the rising cost of living.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
There are no plans to reinstate the temporary increase to Universal Credit.
The government understands the pressures people are facing with the cost of living and these are global challenges, but the government has taken action to support and help families with a package worth over £22 billion in 2022-23.These steps help ensure that on average a person in work is £6000 better off in work than on benefits. And we stand ready to do more as the situation evolves.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support her Department is planning to provide to women affected by the changes to the state pension age.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government has strengthened the safety net to provide financial support during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is committed to providing financial support for people at every stage of their life, including when they near or reach retirement. The welfare system will continue to provide support to men and women who are unable to work or those who are on a low income but who are not eligible to pensioner benefits because of their age.
We have invested in a significant new programme, the Plan for Jobs, to help people of all ages who may be made redundant find work and acquire the skills they need to return to work. Our Fuller Working Lives strategy and the Business Champion for Older Workers and Employers will continue to encourage businesses to recognise the value and skills of employing older workers. Jobcentre Plus Older Claimant Champions provide additional tailored support to help people return to work. We have never spent more as a country on welfare support than we do now.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many women over sixty years of age are claiming universal credit.
Answered by Will Quince
The latest available information on the number of people on Universal Credit broken down by gender and by age is published and can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/.
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to assist women affected by the changes to the state pension age during the covid-19 crisis.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government has strengthened the safety net to provide financial support during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is committed to providing financial support for people at every stage of their life, including when they near or reach retirement. The welfare system will continue to provide support to men and women who are unable to work or those who are on a low income but who are not eligible to pensioner benefits because of their age.
We have invested in a significant new programme, the Plan for Jobs, to help people of all ages who may be made redundant find work and acquire the skills they need to return to work. Our Fuller Working Lives strategy and the Business Champion for Older Workers and Employers will continue to encourage businesses to recognise the value and skills of employing older workers. Jobcentre Plus Older Claimant Champions provide additional tailored support to help people return to work. We have never spent more as a country on welfare support than we do now.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether crowd funded donations to people affected by flooding as a result of Storm Dennis will be treated as exempted hardship payments in relation to benefits.
Answered by Will Quince
Across the range of income-related benefits, there are provisions to disregard payments received for the express purpose of effecting essential repairs to a home damaged by flooding, to make it habitable again, and intended to be used for that purpose. Monies raised though crowd funding have no impact on contributory benefits.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she has taken to ensure child maintenance payments are made on time by employers.
Answered by Will Quince
A welcome pack is issued to each new employer which is followed up with a telephone call to a specific person in payroll to check they understand the Deductions from Earnings Order (DEO) process and the employers obligation, to deduct payments on time from employee salary. Each month thereafter, a target schedule is sent to the employer’s payroll department.
For existing employers a target schedule is also sent and a phone call will have taken place when we initially requested deductions to be taken.
If employers don’t make the payment to CMS on time we will call that employer 5 working days after the missed payment to investigate late payment and re-iterate their obligations to CMS.
Where employers repeatedly fail to send payments, we will work with them to understand what we need to do in order to reach compliance. At this point we also work alongside our Financial Investigations Unit, where we might consider a face to face visit to the employer is appropriate. This will take place with trained investigators, who will also remind employers of their legal obligation to deduct and pass on child maintenance payments.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support is provided to parents who do not receive child maintenance payments on time.
Answered by Will Quince
It is a key principle that unpaid child maintenance should be paid immediately. Where a non-resident parent fails to pay on time or in full, we aim to take immediate action to recover the unpaid maintenance and re-establish compliance.
Where compliance is not achieved and the non-resident parent is employed we will attempt to deduct their maintenance (and/or any arrears) direct from their earnings via a deduction from earnings order. Employers are obliged by law to take this action for us.
We have a range of other strong enforcement powers, including deducting child maintenance directly from bank accounts, using Enforcement Agents to take control of goods, forcing the sale of property, disqualification from driving or commitment to prison as well as restrictions on applying for and holding a passport.
As part of our new Compliance and Arrears Strategy we have further strengthened our collection and enforcement powers to enable us to deduct child maintenance from a wider range of bank accounts and enable us to apply to the court for an order to disqualify a parent with child maintenance arrears from holding or obtaining a UK passport.