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Written Question
Employment: Disability
Thursday 8th February 2024

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

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 number of disabled people who are projected to move into work following the removal of the Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity mobility descriptor in the Work Capability Assessment in the next (a) 12 months, (b) two years and (c) five years.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

We are committed to ensuring our welfare system encourages and supports people into work, while providing a vital safety net for those who need it most.

To reflect new flexibilities in the labour market and to ensure more people are supported to move closer to work, from 2025, we will remove the Mobilising activity used to assess Limited Capability for Work- and Work-Related Activity (LCWRA) in the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). To ensure that those with the most significant mobilising limitations are still protected we will retain the LCWRA Risk regulations for physical health. This means that where work preparation would lead to a deterioration in a claimant’s physical health they would still meet the eligibility criteria for LCWRA.

The changes to the WCA will come into effect from 2025 so impacts will be seen from 2025/26 onwards. The OBR judge that the cumulative rises in employment year-on-year from the removal of the LCWRA Mobilising descriptor are estimated to be 500 in 2025-26, 1,800 by 2026-27 and 5,900 by 2028-29. Adding to this, the expansion of the Universal Support scheme increases funding for placements of disabled people in existing vacancies and for a 'place and train' programme to support them. We expect this to increase employment by around 15,000 by 2028-29.

Additional support will be offered to those moving from the LCWRA group into the Limited Capability for Work (LCW) group. This includes Employment Advice in NHS talking therapies, which combines psychological treatment and employment support for people with mental health conditions, and the Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care (IPSPC) programme, a supported employment model aimed at people with physical or common mental health disabilities to enable them to access paid jobs in the open labour market.


Written Question
Employment: Disability
Tuesday 6th February 2024

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

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 support disabled people with mobility problems into employment.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Government has a wide range of initiatives to support disabled people and people with health conditions, including people with mobility problems, to start, stay and succeed in work. These include:

  • The Work and Health Programme providing tailored and personalised support for disabled people;
  • Access to Work grants helping towards extra costs of working beyond standard reasonable adjustments;
  • Disability Confident encouraging employers to think differently about disability and health, and to take positive action to address the issues disabled employees face in the workplace;
  • A digital information service for employers providing better integrated and tailored guidance on supporting health and disability in the workplace;
  • Increasing access to occupational health, including the testing of financial incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises and the self-employed;
  • Increased Work Coach support in Jobcentres for disabled people and people with health conditions to help them move towards and in to work;
  • Disability Employment Advisers in Jobcentres offering advice and expertise on how to help disabled people and people with health conditions into work;
  • Introducing Employment Advisors to Musculoskeletal Conditions (MSK) services in England, helping individuals with MSK conditions to return to or remain in employment.
  • Work in partnership between the DWP and health systems, including Employment Advice in NHS Talking Therapies, and the Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care (IPSPC) programme, a Supported Employment model (place, train and maintain) delivered in health settings, aimed at people with physical or common mental health disabilities to support them to access paid jobs in the open labour market.

Building on existing provision and the £2 billion investment announced at the Spring Budget, we announced a new package of support in Autumn Statement 2023. This includes:

  • Doubling the number of places on the Universal Support employment programme, to provide support for 100,000 people per year when fully rolled out;
  • Formally launching WorkWell, which will bring together the NHS, local authorities and other partners, in collaboration with jobcentres, to provide light touch work and health support in approximately 15 pilot areas;
  • Building on the extension of the certification of the fit notes to a wider range of healthcare professions, exploring new ways of providing individuals receiving a fit note with timely access to work and health support; and
  • Establishing an expert group to support the development of the voluntary national baseline for Occupational Health provision.

Written Question
Financial Assistance Scheme: Cost of Living
Tuesday 30th January 2024

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to support recipients of the Financial Assistance Scheme with the cost of living.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

This Government is committed to take action that helps to alleviate levels of pensioner poverty, including those who are receiving payments from Financial Assistance Scheme. This includes measures such as:

  • the triple lock - that increased the basic and new state pension by 10.1% in financial year 2023/24
  • Pension Credit– which was also increased by 10.1% in financial year 2023/24
  • a £300 payment – which has been made to pensioner households as a top up to their Winter Fuel Payment both this winter, and in the winter of 2022/23.

Written Question
Financial Assistance Scheme
Tuesday 30th January 2024

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what his Department's policy is on the introduction of indexation for inflation for the Financial Assistance Scheme.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

While all legislation is kept under review as a matter of course, there are currently no concrete plans to review the Financial Assistance Scheme indexation rules, which is complex and will require careful consideration.


Written Question
Financial Assistance Scheme
Tuesday 30th January 2024

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has had recent discussions with the Pensions Action Group on the Financial Assistance Scheme.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Secretary of State has not had any recent discussions with the Pensions Action Group (PAG). However, on 8 January 2024 I met with representatives of PAG in which a range of issues in relation to the Financial Assistance Scheme were discussed.


Written Question
Financial Assistance Scheme
Tuesday 30th January 2024

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of the Financial Assistance Scheme for individuals who lost occupational pensions because their sponsoring employer became insolvent.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The information required to carry out such an assessment is not readily available and to obtain the detail needed would take significant time. The Secretary of State has therefore made no such assessment and does not intend to do so at this stage.


Written Question
Children: Maintenance
Tuesday 19th December 2023

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average wait time is to receive a response to a Child Maintenance application.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

Between 75 and 80% of child maintenance applications are cleared within 6 weeks and a written response is issued by letter to both customers with details of the application. This is based on the last 4 quarters performance with the average at 77%.

An application for child maintenance will be recorded as having been made on the day it is received by the Child Maintenance Service:

1. for written applications this will mean the date shown on the office date stamp

2. for telephone applications this will mean the date that the telephone conversation takes place

3. for online applications this will mean the date the client pressed the “send application” button

Applications are considered 'cleared' when one of the following occurs:

a) the amount of child maintenance to be paid has been calculated and an arrangement to pay maintenance between the two parents has been agreed.

b) the amount of child maintenance to be paid has been calculated as zero; or

c) the child maintenance application has been closed.

The length of time to complete an application is most impacted by the service’s ability to trace and confirm the identity of the non-resident parent from the information provided within the application.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Debts
Tuesday 19th December 2023

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of cases were categorised as in debt (a) in 2018, (b) in 2022 and (c) now.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

We do not have the number of case groups with child maintenance debt as of 2018 and the latest data we can supply is for September 2023 which will match the most recently published Child Maintenance Service Statistics.

It should be noted that that we have interpreted your question as asking how many paying parents had child maintenance debt. We do not have data on if the parents have other types of debt.

Mar-18

Mar-22

Sep-23

Paying Parents*

390,435

544,591

633,768

Case groups with child maintenance debt **(rounded to the nearest 10)

Not available

204,190

233,270

Percentage

37%

37%

* Please note this will include paying parents with collect & pay cases, direct pay cases and collect & pay cases who have no ongoing child maintenance liability.

** The case groups with child maintenance debt are sourced from administrative data and therefore has not undergone the same rigorous quality assurance as officially published statistics.


Written Question
Child Maintenance Service
Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will publish a breakdown of resident and non-resident parents using the Child Maintenance Service by gender.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) official statistics are published every three months. Statistics on the gender of paying parents using the CMS, from quarter ending March 2016 to quarter ending September 2023, can be found in the CMS Paying Parent dataset available on Stat-Xplore. Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest and, if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required. The Department is considering expanding these statistics to cover more information on receiving parents.


Written Question
Child Maintenance Service
Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an estimate of the number and proportion of parents using the Child Maintenance Service who are in debt as of 12 November 2023.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

We have answered based on our assumption that the question asked is in connection with the number of people with child maintenance debt and not broader family financial challenges and debt (credit cards etc)

In line with our published Child Maintenance Service (CMS) statistics the latest information only covers up to September 2023. The total amount of CMS parents with CMS debt is 233.3k. Please note that the debt considered in this calculation will include instances where the liability has been charged to a Paying Parent's account, but the scheduled collection date relating to that liability has not yet been reached. For a small number of Paying Parents, this will be the only 'debt' that they owe.