Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
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 using the appointee scheme to support disabled young people who do not have the mental capacity to access the money in their Child Trust Fund accounts.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The DWP appointee system gives access to social security benefits only. It does not give access to monies held in Child Trust Funds. Where the child is incapable of accessing the funds themselves, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 provides for how a third party can do that on the child’s behalf, namely, through the Court of Protection. There are no current plans to change this approach.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the savings in benefits payments that will be made because of the restriction on social housing rents increasing by the lower rate of seven per cent in the next financial year.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Details of the DWPs estimated expenditure were published at Autumn Statement 2022 and can be found here.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much and what proportion of the Household Support Fund has been used to help renters pay off rent arrears by (a) region and (b) local authority as on 22 July 2022.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We do not hold this information.
Local Authorities have discretion on how their funding is used within the scope set out in the fund guidance and the accompanying grant determination. Support with rent arrears is not the primary intent of the Household Support Fund and should not be the focus of spend.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in what way allocations to local authorities are to be calculated in the context of the £500 extension to the household support fund.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Government is providing an additional £500 million from October to help households with the cost of essentials, bringing the total funding for this support to £1.5 billion. In England £421m will be used to extend the Household Support Fund (October 2022 – March 2023).
Guidance and individual local authority indicative allocations for this further extension to the Household Support Fund will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will provide details of the (a) three trigger point targets in the universal credit system and (b) the proportion of the working day that universal credit service centre employees are expected to spend on each trigger point.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Our case managers, work coaches and decision makers work together to support claimants. Our Universal Credit Case Management approach has been designed to enable case managers to prioritise their workload by using their dashboard and triggers, which contain categories of cases requiring action selecting the most urgent cases to work on first, therefore they are not performance targets. The categories are those requiring payment; action to prevent a payment from being blocked; responses to claimant contact; and further action to manage a claim. The aim is to clear any pending actions once a case is taken up, therefore there is no expectation on how long a case manager should spend on each section of their dashboard.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many funds are allocated to local authorities by her Department through a process of competitive bidding; and if she will publish the names of those funds.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Local Authority Partnership, Engagement and Delivery (LA-PED) provides funding to local authorities for the costs in delivering Housing Benefit (a DWP benefit delivered by local authorities) and reimburses local authorities for Housing Benefit expenditure incurred. More recently, we fund for further grants delivered by local authorities, such as, the COVID Winter Support Grant. The delivery of HB and grants (as applicable) is legislated and therefore a statutory duty for local authorities. All funding provided through LA-PED does not go through a process of competitive bidding.
To date we have had no competed grants to LAs in 2021/22
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 16 June 2020 to Question 57092 on Children: Maintenance, whether the redeployment of staff led to the decision by the Child Maintenance Service to suspend initiating new enforcement action; and what assessment he has made of the effect of that suspension on parents.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The CMS has made temporary changes to services to ensure we continue to support separated parents as part of our wider efforts to provide financial support through the welfare system.
Taking substantial enforcement action relies on third parties, including Her Majesty’s courts, bailiffs and the banks, which are currently not in a position to support significant enforcement action. We are committed to working with third parties to pursue enforcement action as soon as possible, where necessary.
Those found to be abusing the system at this difficult time can be subjected to the full extent of our enforcement powers.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to child maintenance services, what proportion of payments made to parents with care are currently being made at the assessed level; and what the level of arrears is as a proportion of the monthly amount due.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The available information regarding payments is available on Gov.uk. up to and including December 2019. Table 9 of the National Tables refers.
We do not have information in relation to the level of arrears as a proportion of the monthly amount due.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the levels of (a) staff and (b) resources allocated to child maintenance payments has changed since the covid-19 lockdown began.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Child Maintenance Service, as part of Department for Work and Pensions is supporting the effort to deliver essential services during the current coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Some colleagues have been redeployed to support the effort in benefit payments.
Our priority is to maintain the flow of maintenance that is currently being paid, by easing the financial pressure on parents and ensuring that we transfer the payments as quickly as possible to receiving parents. While there has been the redeployment of some Child Maintenance Service colleagues, the majority have remained in their current roles and are working to ensure the flow of payments is maintained.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if the Government will be making an additional payment to those in receipt of carer's allowance of £460 to mirror the Scottish Government's Coronavirus Carer’s Allowance Supplement payment.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The Scottish Government uses its powers under devolution to pay carers, regardless of their means, extra amounts through the Carer’s Allowance Supplement.
The UK Government has taken a different approach and chosen to focus extra support on carers on the lowest incomes. For example, carers on Universal Credit can receive around an additional £1950 a year through the Carers Element. And they will also benefit from the extra £1040 a year that has been added to the standard allowance in Universal Credit.