Asked by: Harpreet Uppal (Labour - Huddersfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the social security system provides (a) supportive and (b) compassionate services for people experiencing (i) poverty and (ii) hardship.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government believes that the best way of helping people experiencing poverty and hardship is through a system that supports them into good work wherever possible. Through the proposals in our Get Britain Working White Paper we will deliver the biggest reforms to employment support in a generation. This will include reforming Jobcentre Plus and creating a new Jobs and Careers Service across Great Britain that will enable everyone to access good, meaningful work, and support them to progress in work including through an enhanced focus on skills and careers. Our new service will provide personalised support and move away from the one size fits all approach that Jobcentre Plus has today. We will also remove the stigma of going to a Jobcentre, ensuring it is somewhere that people go to receive support, rather than to feel penalised for receiving benefits. At Autumn Budget, we secured £55m to support the first steps to build, test, and trial the new service for 2025/26.
Universal Credit supports people on a low income in or out of work and is claimed by more than 7.5 million people, and we are committed to reviewing it to make sure it is doing the job we want it to, to make work pay and tackle poverty. We are fulfilling this commitment trough specific work on many of Universal Credit's core elements, and the extensive work taking place through the child poverty taskforce, our health and disability reforms and our employment reforms We have already shown our ambition with the changes made to the Fair Repayment Rate, giving 1.2m households an average of £420 per year. In addition, around 4 million households will benefit from the increase in the Universal Credit Standard Allowance from April 2026, the biggest permanent boost to out-of-work support since 1980, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. This increase is estimated to be worth £725 annually by 2029/30 in cash terms - £250 annually above inflation for a single household aged 25 or over.
To further support struggling households, we are providing £742 million to extend the Household Support Fund (HSF) in England until 31 March 2026, enabling local authorities to continue to provide vulnerable households with immediate crisis support towards the cost of essentials, such as energy, water and food. Starting from 1 April 2026, we have announced a further £842 million a year (£1 billion including Barnett consequential) to reform crisis support with the new Crisis and Resilience Fund, supporting our wider mission to reduce child poverty by reducing dependence on food parcels, preventing homelessness and making sure people can access urgent support when they need it.
Asked by: Harpreet Uppal (Labour - Huddersfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support is available to companies seeking to (a) train and (b) employ autistic job seekers.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Neurodivergent people bring many positive benefits to workplaces but face particular barriers to employment, which is reflected in a poor overall employment rate. As a government, we want to support all forms of neurodiversity in the workplace by encouraging employers to adopt neuro-inclusive working practices so that everyone can thrive at work.
On 29 January this year, the Government launched an independent panel of academics with expertise and experiences of neurodiversity to advise us on boosting neurodiversity awareness and inclusion at work. Many of the panel are diagnosed or identify as neurodivergent and/or have familial experience alongside their professional experience and expertise.
The panel will consider the reasons why neurodivergent people have poor experiences in the workplace, and a low overall employment rate. Recommendations are expected to include employer actions that can support the inclusion of neurodivergent people, including in recruitment and day to day workplace practices.
Employers have a key role to play. Our support to employers includes the online Support with Employee Health and Disability service, to support employers managing health and disability in the workplace. This includes questions of disclosure and equipping employers to feel confident having conversations about health and disability. The Disability Confident scheme also signposts employers to expert resources which support the employment of disabled people, including neurodivergent people.
Asked by: Harpreet Uppal (Labour - Huddersfield)
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 help increase the number of young people in work.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
As part of our plan to Get Britain Working, we will launch a new Youth Guarantee for all young people aged 18-21 in England to ensure that they can access quality training opportunities, an apprenticeship or help to find work. The Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education are working closely with the eight Mayoral Strategic Authorities in England set to receive grant funding to deliver the Youth Guarantee Trailblazers from Spring 2025. We will use the learning from these Trailblazers to inform the future design and development of the Youth Guarantee as it rolls-out across the rest of England.
This is alongside a new national jobs and careers service to help get more people into work, work health and skills plans for the economically inactive, and the launch of Skills England to open new opportunities for young people. We will work in partnership with organisations and businesses at the national and local level to offer exciting and engaging opportunities to young people. This could include work experience, training courses or employability programmes.
The Government is also reforming the apprenticeships offer into a more flexible growth and skills offer, aligned to the industrial strategy. The Department for Education is working to introduce new foundation apprenticeships for young people, as well as shorter duration apprenticeships, in targeted sectors. These will help more people learn new high-quality skills at work, fuel innovation in businesses across the country, and provide high-quality entry pathways for young people.
DWP currently provides young people aged 16-24 with labour market support through an extensive range of interventions at a national and local level. This includes flexible provision driven by local need, nationwide employment programmes and support delivered by work coaches based in our Jobcentres and in local communities working alongside partners.