Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the highest value overpayment has been for Carer’s Allowance in the (a) 2021-22, (b) 2022-23 and (c) 2023-24 financial years.
Answered by Paul Maynard
Claimants have a responsibility to ensure they are entitled to benefits they claim and to inform the DWP of any changes in their circumstances that could impact their award.
Where overpayments do occur due to not being entitled to the benefit, the Department has a duty to the taxpayer to protect public funds and to ask for money to be paid back. We remain committed to working with anyone who is struggling with their repayment terms and will always look to negotiate sustainable and affordable repayment plans.
Our most recent statistics show that Carer's Allowance overpayments relating to earnings/employment represents just 2.1% of our £3.3bn Carer’s Allowance expenditure.
The information requested has been provided in the table below. To avoid potentially disclosing personal information, we have bucketed the values requested.
Highest Value Carer’s Allowance Overpayment | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 |
Total | £60-70k | £30-40k | £40-50k |
The data has been sourced from internal DWP management information, which is intended only to help the Department to manage its business. It is not intended for publication and has not been subject to the same quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics.
Note that the values represent the original overpayment amount when raised on Debt Manager. As the year relates to when the overpayment was raised as a debt for recovery, it does not necessarily relate to the period as to when benefit was overpaid. The overpayments above all span periods of many years.
Note that the data provided is for all categories of overpayment. It is not necessarily the case that these overpayments arose due to claimants breaching the earnings limit.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
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 potential merits of removing the 21 hour study rule from the eligibility criteria for Carer’s Allowance.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
This Government recognises and appreciates the vital contribution made by informal carers. With respect to full-time education, the Government believes that this should be supported by the educational maintenance system. That is why, as a general principle, full-time students are precluded from entitlement to income-related and income-maintenance benefits, including Carer’s Allowance.
Educational institutions decide which young people receive bursaries or other support and determine the level of financial support they receive. They develop their own eligibility criteria for access to the discretionary bursary fund, including setting a household income threshold appropriate to their area, and must publish this information for their students. Arrangements may differ across the United Kingdom.
In England, for example, over £160 million of bursary funding has been allocated in the 2023/24 academic year to institutions to help disadvantaged 16- to 19-year-olds with the costs of taking part in education. This is nearly 12% higher than published allocations for last year. The Department for Education has also made available £20 million each year in England specifically to support students in defined vulnerable groups.
Carer’s Allowance is a devolved benefit in Scotland.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 16 April 2024 to Question 20473 on State Retirement Pensions: Women, what his expected timetable is to respond to the PHSO report.
Answered by Paul Maynard
In laying the report before Parliament at the end of March, the Ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House, and a further update to the House will be provided once the report's findings have been fully considered.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
What discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the date of the commencement of the Corporation Tax (Northern Ireland) Act 2015.
Answered by Steve Baker
In the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper, the UK Government committed to a rapid, focused process, on the implementation of corporation tax devolution through a new Joint Exchequer Committee.
The Committee will take forward urgent work on this process. However, the devolution of corporation tax alone will not solve the financial challenges facing Northern Ireland. The Executive needs to make difficult decisions around revenue-raising and public service transformation to put Northern Ireland’s finances on a sustainable footing.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of allowing recipients of Attendance Allowance to report a change in circumstances digitally.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The modernisation of Retirement Services, which includes Attendance Allowance, forms a key part of DWP’s Service Modernisation Programme. A key objective of the programme is to understand how existing services - such as Attendance Allowance - should operate in the future and understand how and whether services, including reporting change of circumstances, can be accessed by citizens more quickly and easily online.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to publish the next action plan for antimicrobial resistance.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
In 2019, the Government published the first of four five-year national action plans (NAP), aimed at tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR) within and beyond our own borders. This plan is available at the following link:
We are now in the process of developing the second five-year NAP, which will run from 2024 to 2029. It will be designed to ensure progress is maintained towards delivering our 20-year vision on AMR, in which resistance is effectively contained and controlled by 2040. Further information on the 20-year vision is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-20-year-vision-for-antimicrobial-resistance
The 2024 to 2029 AMR NAP is being co-developed across the Government, its agencies, and the administrations in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, with support from a wide range of external stakeholders, and informed by the responses to the Call for Evidence. The NAP is expected to be published in 2024.
The 2024 to 2029 AMR NAP will build on the achievements of the 2019 to 2024 NAP, whilst recognising where there is more to do, and will be aligned with global plans and frameworks for action.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Answer of 14 March 2022 to Question 133232 on Antibiotics: Drug Resistance and to the policy paper entitled UK five-year action plan for antimicrobial resistance: 2019 to 2024, published on 24 January 2019, what recent progress her Department has made on halving healthcare-associated Gram-negative blood stream infections.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
As described in the answer of 14 March 2022 to Question 133232, progress towards the target of halving healthcare-associated Gram-negative bloodstream infections (GNBSI) has proved very challenging, in part due to the diverse nature of the underlying causes of these infections. Data on the incidence of these infections in England is published quarterly by the UK Health Security Agency, and is available at the following link:
Incidence of the three main healthcare-associated GNBSI organisms, E. coli, klebsiella pneumoniae, and pseudomonas aeruginosa, has fluctuated between 2019 and 2024, including a sharp decline in the incidence of E. coli seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, overall, the total incidence of healthcare associated GNBSI remains significantly above the target.
We are currently developing the 2024 to 2029 antimicrobial resistance national action plan. We anticipate that in the delivery of this plan, we will continue to focus on GNBSI, building on lessons learnt over the past five years.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of waiting times to speak to the Disability Service Centre.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
Telephony is our customers’ primary channel to contact us. We continually assess the number of calls we are receiving and the associated waiting times, deploying resources accordingly to support service levels wherever this is possible.
However, due to recent higher volumes of calls than forecast, from the 24th of April and throughout May, we are deploying dedicated telephony specific resource to the Personal Independent Payment telephony lines which will give better support when dealing with sudden increases in traffic.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many certificates of sponsorship which have been (a) suspended and (b) revoked have been successfully appealed in each year for which data is available.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The Home Office do not suspend or revoke Certificates of Sponsorship, therefore we do not hold the requested data.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many certificates of sponsorship have been (a) suspended and (b) revoked in each year for which data is available.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The Home Office do not suspend or revoke Certificates of Sponsorship, therefore we do not hold the requested data.