Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent progress her Department has made on tackling child poverty.
Answered by Will Quince
Throughout the pandemic, our priority has been to protect incomes, including additional spending of over £7.4 billion last year, to strengthen welfare support for people of working age.
The evidence shows having parents in work is the most effective way of tackling child poverty, which is why we have invested £407 billion in protecting jobs throughout the pandemic, and why we are spending over £30 billion on a comprehensive plan for jobs to help people back into work
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate her Department has made of the number of disabled households whose benefit payments will (a) increase and (b) decrease when moved from legacy benefits to universal credit.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
No such estimate has been made. The Managed Migration Pilot remains suspended as the Department continues to focus on delivering its part of the Government’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. SDP transitional payments were available to eligible claimants who were previously entitled to the SDP as part of a legacy benefit and made a Universal Credit claim before the SDP Gateway came into effect on 16th January 2019. We have ensured that a transitional SDP element will be considered for those entitled to SDP who make a claim to Universal Credit following a change of circumstances on or after 27th January 2021.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the oral contribution of the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work on 7 October 2019, Official Report, column 1480 that around 1 million disabled households will gain on average £100 a month on universal credit compared with legacy benefits, if she will publish the analysis supporting that statement.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The Department’s internal analysis was based on its INFORM volume forecast model and Policy Simulation Model. The underlying methodology was signed off by the Office for Budget Responsibility and set out in detail in the Welfare Trends Report 2018, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/welfare-trends-report-january-2018.
The Department will publish full analysis comparing the benefit entitlement of UC claimants and legacy claimants in due course.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will publish details of the Internal Process Reviews completed by her Department from April 2019 to November 2020.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
Internal Process Reviews are internal retrospective investigations, focussed on organisational learning. They are internal reviews that check if process was followed, to encourage learning and to drive change through the Department. We have no plans to publish any Internal Process Reviews, but will continue to follow our duties under the Freedom of Information Act in line with the 2016 First Tier Tribunal ruling in relation to what information can lawfully be disclosed.
Our priority is that claimants get the benefits to which they are entitled promptly and receive a supportive and compassionate service. In the vast majority of cases this happens but when, sadly, there is a tragic case we take it very seriously and seek to learn any lessons as appropriate.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
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 changes in the level of the (a) number and (b) proportion of (i) disabled people, (ii) children, (iii) working age people and (iv) people of state pension age living in poverty since the start of the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Will Quince
HMT’s recent distributional analysis released in March 2021 showed that Government interventions in response to Covid-19 are supporting the poorest working households the most (excluding any earnings gains). The poorest 10% of working households had seen no loss to household income as of November 2020. This is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/966207/DA_Document_Budget_2021.pdf
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many claimants for (a) universal credit, (b) employment and support allowance and (c) personal independence payments have ceased their claims between March 2020 to present.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The information requested for Universal Credit and Employment and Support Allowance is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost. However, the latest Universal Credit statistics: user engagement survey report does include a statement, in section 4, regarding the development of Universal Credit flows data, as part of the Universal Credit statistics release strategy.
The Department publishes ESA quarterly caseload figures and UC monthly caseload figures and these can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance for users is available at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
Table 1 below shows the number of claimants receiving PIP who ceased their PIP claim each month from March 2020 to October 2020, the latest data available, who were receiving PIP at the end of the previous month.
Table 1: Number of PIP claimants who ceased their PIP claim, March 2020 – October 2020
Month | Number of PIP claims that are ceased |
Mar-20 | 14,270 |
Apr-20 | 16,460 |
May-20 | 8,660 |
Jun-20 | 9,120 |
Jul-20 | 7,720 |
Aug-20 | 11,610 |
Sep-20 | 11,290 |
Oct-20 | 14,930 |
Source: PIP Atomic Data Store
Notes:
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people received Access to Work funding in (a) 2018-19, (b) 2019-20 and (c) 2020-21.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The number of people who have received an Access to Work payment broken down by financial year up to 2019/20 is available in Table 6 of the Access to Work statistics publications.
The information requested for 2020/21 is intended for future release in the 2020/21 Official Statistics publication.
The latest Access to Work official statistics can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/access-to-work-statistics
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many new applications for Access to Work funding have been received by her Department from March 2020 to date.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The information requested on number of applications received is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate costs.
However, the Access to Work statistics includes how many applications result in provision being approved from 2007/08 to 2019/20. Please see Table 3 of the Access to Work statistics.
The latest Access to Work statistics can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/access-to-work-statistics-april-2007-to-march-2020