Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department plans to meet with representatives from the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
As a newly formed Government, we need time to review the Ombudsman’s report along with the evidence provided during the investigation. We will listen to all views, including those of 1950s-born women as we take this work forward.
The WASPI organisation has written to me and I intend to meet with their representatives in due course.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
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 help improve the support provided by Jobcentre Plus centres in County Durham.
Answered by Jo Churchill
There are 10 Jobcentres within County Durham, all of which have teams who actively collaborate with a range of partners to support people into work and, help employers to fill vacancies.
The Jobcentres are working with partners such as Durham New College, Derwentside College, East Durham College, Durham County Council, Barclays, the NHS, Community Hubs, National Careers Service, and Mental Health Matters to provide a wraparound employment and skills offer for customers. This offer is designed to support customers and help them find work and, help meet the recruitment needs of local employers.
We take a sector-based approach to recruitment and our Jobcentres have been working closely with employers to run Job Fairs for various sectors including manufacturing, Civil Service, hospitality, logistics, health care, construction, retail, security, adult social care and telecoms. As an example, Durham Jobcentre recently hosted a Care focussed event with employers including Care Academy, Embracing Care, HC One, Kelly Park and the NHS.
Disability Employment Advisers (DEA’s) offer advice and expertise on how to help disabled people and those with health conditions into work. the Embracing Employment and Healthcare trial is currently being piloted within Durham City Jobcentre. Employment and Healthcare Practitioners (EHPs) are co located within the Jobcentre working with customers who apply for Employment Support Allowance and Universal Credit and who have declared a health condition or disability. EHP’s work with them to understand the impact their health condition has on their daily lives, identifying their individual barriers and support them in addressing those barriers.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman's report entitled Women’s State Pension age: our findings on injustice and associated issues, HC 638, published on 21 March 2024, what correspondence his Department has received from representatives of Women Against State Pension Inequality since the publication of that report.
Answered by Paul Maynard
A search had been conducted within the Ministerial Correspondence Team and one letter has been received. However, as the Department does not have a centrally collated database a further search would incur disproportionate costs.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
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 training available to work coaches at Jobcentre Plus centres.
Answered by Jo Churchill
To ensure the continuous improvement, Work Coaches learning is regularly reviewed with policy colleagues, work psychologists and representatives from service delivery. Through our evaluation strategy at key points, we conduct surveys to gather quantitative and qualitative data on learners’ experience, the questions focus on knowledge, confidence and required support. We also hold listening circles with Work Coaches to gather evidence of the effectiveness of the learning and consolidation. All opportunities to improve our products are impacted and changes are made as quickly as possible.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of changes to the State Pension age on women born in the 1950s in the City of Durham constituency.
Answered by Paul Maynard
We do not hold regional figures on the impact of changes to State Pension age.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support is available if a claimant cannot attend a Job Centre appointment due to a disability.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Where a claimant on a work-related benefit has a health condition, illness or a disability, Work Coaches have the discretion to tailor requirements to what is reasonable and achievable, taking into account the claimant’s needs, circumstances and capability. Where appropriate, Work Coaches have the discretion to adjust how often the claimant meets with them and how these meetings take place, including face to face appointments in the Jobcentre, telephone appointments, video conference, or digital appointments for Universal Credit claimants. In some circumstances a claimant’s work-related requirements maybe be lifted for a period if their ability to carry them out is disrupted due to their personal circumstances.
If a claimant is deemed to be vulnerable or needs additional support when making an application for benefit, the DWP Visiting Team can meet with them at their home or another location to support with their claim.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support is available for claimants unable to complete his Department's forms.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
We aim to provide a tailored service that recognises those with complex needs at any point throughout their journey and ensures appropriate support is made available quickly.
For customers who are unable to complete forms themselves a home visit from a visiting officer can be arranged, if they wish to retain autonomy and not use an appointee.
Customers claiming Universal Credit can also be supported by the universal support scheme.
An example of the support available is; Getting help with an application - Understanding Universal Credit
Further support for other service lines can be found on Welcome to GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
DWP continuously reviews and improves the service for people who claim or seek to claim benefits to ensure services are accessible and responsive to citizen needs.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many claimants died after their claims were denied for (a) Employment Support Allowance and (b) Universal Credit in 2023.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
This information is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Eligibility criteria for Universal Credit and Employment and Support Allowance can be found here and here.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department has conducted an equality impact assessment of the use of machine learning in benefit fraud investigations.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The Department has robust processes to ensure ethical use and impact of data is considered which includes Equality Impact Assessments for transformative initiatives that involve personal data, aligned with data-ethics frameworks, codes of practice, and working principles for analytical communities within the department that work with personal data.
We do not use algorithms to make decisions regarding fraudulent claims, these are always made by humans.
We will be providing further information in our 2023-24 Report and Accounts - committees.parliament.uk/publications/42012/documents/208912/default/
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps the Child Maintenance Service has taken to help recover arrears in child maintenance payments.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) continues to take rigorous action to collect maintenance, combining robust negotiation activity with the highly effective use of its extensive range of Enforcement Powers. This approach is driven by the Payment Compliance strategy increasing CMS compliance influencing activities to tackle non-paying cases and challenge non-compliant behaviours. CMS applies a Continuous Improvement focus to Enforcement strategy and processes.
In the quarter ending September 2023, of 180,000 Paying Parents due to pay via the Collect and Pay service:
Depending on a Paying Parent’s employment status we use Deduction from Earnings orders or deductions from bank accounts. We have collected in excess of £16m via deduction orders in 2023. We move cases swiftly to Legal Enforcement. Securing a Liability Order (LO) for 11k cases in the courts, cases are referred to Enforcement Agents (Bailiffs) who have collected almost £5m in 2023. Where house ownership is established, charging orders and orders for sale are instigated. CMS will quickly move to taking court action for the removal of driving licence, committal to prison or removal of passport. £4.5m collected from cases at this stage.
As a result of this intense effort to increase enforcement activity £36m collected from arrears.
The planned introduction of the Administrative Liability Order in 2024 will remove the need to apply to the courts and will reduce the current average time of 20 weeks to secure an LO to 6 weeks.
The published statistics below provides data to September 2023 Section 9 Enforcement and the National tables 7.1 and 7.2.
Child Maintenance Service statistics: data to September 2023 - GOV.UK(www.gov.uk)