Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between David Gauke and Eleanor Smith(6 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gauke
As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), in the last few years, something like 40,000 foreign national offenders have been returned to their own countries. We continue to seek to sign additional agreements so we can continue to make progress with this.
Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
Will the impact of cuts to legal aid on unaccompanied and separated children under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 be considered?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between David Gauke and Eleanor Smith(7 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr David Gauke)
This Department’s mission is to support people through all stages of their lives. Universal credit is being introduced slowly, and it is steadily and positively transforming people’s prospects by bringing about the satisfaction and financial security of entering work and increasing earnings. We are also helping citizens to prepare for later life with our work on pensions, and we are committed to helping people from all walks of life at all stages of their lives. We will continue to build on that body of work to achieve our aims.
Eleanor Smith
How does the Department plan to respond to its own research, which shows that universal credit is a driver of rent arrears among families who rely on it for support?
Mr Gauke
As my ministerial colleagues have already said, we must recognise that a number of the statistics that have been quoted show that rent arrears have arisen before people have entered into universal credit, and that after time the numbers in rent arrears starts to fall. We continue to improve the system to ensure that payment timeliness is improved, for example, and that people are able to access advances when they need to.