Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much European Social Fund money has been spent in Worcestershire in each of the last five financial years.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department for Work and Pensions is responsible for the England 2014-2020 European Social Fund (ESF) Programme. The amount of ESF Programme funding paid to ESF projects in the Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership area in the past 5 financial years is provided below. This relates to the payment of claims submitted quarterly by projects operating in the LEP area, for expenditure incurred. Claims are paid in arrears and therefore the data may include expenditure which was incurred by projects in previous financial years.
Financial Year | ESF payments to ESF projects in Worcestershire LEP area (by date paid) |
2017/18 | £ 513,088.59 |
2018/19 | £ 2,634,140.85 |
2019/20 | £ 2,019,650.43 |
2020/21 | £ 3,306,512.91 |
2021/22 (up to 01/03/2022) | £ 1,857,378.87 |
Total | £ 10,330,771.65 |
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the level of opt-out from auto-enrollment into workplace pensions during the covid-19 lockdown period.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department does not yet have suitable data to make an assessment of the number of employees who have reduced their contributions, or have stopped saving, since the start of the Covid-19 lockdown period.
We are monitoring the impacts of covid-19 on workplace pension participation and saving levels and are working closely with the pensions industry and across government to understand the impact of the emergency.
Helping people to save for their futures remains a key priority for this Government. We put in place an unprecedented package of support to strengthen job and income security during the emergency; this included help to ease workplace pension saving for businesses with furloughed workers. As part of the next phase of its response, the Government’s goal is to support, create and protect jobs; and giving businesses confidence to retain and hire workers supports the capacity for retirement saving.