Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
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 potential impact of proposed changes to the Access to Work Scheme in the Pathways to Work Green Paper on individual claimants.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We will review all aspects of the Access to Work scheme after evaluating the findings of the Pathways to Work consultation alongside the work of the collaboration committees.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to implement proposed changes to the Access to Work Scheme in the Pathways to Work Green Paper.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Reforms to Access to Work are needed to ensure a better service for customers, to help disabled people start and stay in work, to provide clarity in what support should be provided and to ensure we are providing value for money for the taxpayer.
Following the consultation launched by the Pathways to Work Green Paper, which closed in June, we are reviewing all aspects of the Scheme. We are working closely on proposals with stakeholders, and in particular disabled people and their representatives. We have established a Collaboration Committee that brings disabled people and other experts together to inform changes to the design of the Scheme.
No changes have been made to Access to Work policy. We will announce any changes prior to them being implemented.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many successful mandatory reconsiderations there have been since 2020, broken down by (a) year, (b) value, and (c) benefit type.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Information for Personal Independence Payment and Employment and Support Allowance can be found on Stat Xplore.
Successful Personal Independence Payment (PIP) mandatory reconsiderations (MRs) can be found on the ‘PIP MR Clearances’ dataset. Use the ‘Geography’ and ‘National – Regional – LA – OAs’ filter to select ‘DWP policy ownership’. The ‘MR Decision’ filter can be used to select ‘New Decision – Award Changed’ and the ‘Month’ filter can be used to select the years you are interested in.
For Employment Support Allowance Work Capability Assessment (ESA WCA) successful MRs, use the ‘Mandatory Reconsiderations – Clearances’ dataset. Use the ‘Geography’ and ‘National – Regional – LA – Ward’ filter to select ‘Great Britain’ and then ‘England’ and ‘Wales’. The ‘Decision’ filter can be used to select ‘Revised – allowed’ and the ‘Date of Decision’ filter can be used to select the time period needed.
You can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user and, if needed, you can access guidance on how to extract the information required.
Universal Credit (UC) MRs can be found in Table 1 below.
Table 1: volume of successful UC MRs by financial year
| 2019_20 | 2020_21 | 2021_22 | 2022_23 | 2023_24 | 2024_25 |
Volume of successful MRs | 50,000 | 47,000 | 61,000 | 100,000 | 107,000 | 110,000 |
Notes:
Information on other benefit MRs as well as their value is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make a comparative assessment of the level of Universal Credit payments made to foster carers with the prior system of (a) Working Tax Credit and (b) Child Tax Credit.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
No such assessment has been made. Whilst the UC child element won’t be paid if the child or qualifying young person is looked after by a foster carer, the allowance and fees received by foster carers in return for fostering are not treated as earnings and are fully disregarded for the purposes of calculating entitlement to Universal Credit. The rules differ to how WTC and CTC treated the income.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many benefit overpayments have been recovered since 2020, broken down by (a) year, (b) value, and (c) benefit type.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Estimates of the overpayment cost of fraud and error in the benefit system for the past five financial years can be found at: Fraud and error in the benefit system - GOV.UK
Recovery of benefit overpayments can be found in the attached annex.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many benefit overpayments there have been since 2020, broken down by (a) year, (b) value, and (c) benefit type.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Estimates of the overpayment cost of fraud and error in the benefit system for the past five financial years can be found at: Fraud and error in the benefit system - GOV.UK
Recovery of benefit overpayments can be found in the attached annex.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
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 effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service in reaching targets set under its service level standards in each year since 2020.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) has four official Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), each with a standard measure for 1) assessment accuracy, 2) application clearances, 3) change of circumstances clearances and 4) Collect and Pay compliance.
Information on the accuracy of CMS assessments, which has a standard level of >99%, is published in the annual CMS Client Funds Account, and since 2020 has shown a consistent level of 99.4%, increasing for the latest year available (2023/24) to 99.5% .
The published quarterly CMS statistics provide information on application clearances, change of circumstances clearances and Collect and Pay compliance, with the latest data available for quarter ending December 2024, and these are shown in the table below.
Quarterly Child Maintenance Service Key Performance Indicators for Applications, Change of Circumstances and Collect & Pay Compliance, April 2020 to December 2024
| Applications - cleared within 12 weeks Standard 90% | Change of Circumstances - cleared within 28 days Standard 80% | Collect and Pay compliance - paying parent paid some maintenance Standard 67% |
Apr - Jun 20 | 80% | 87% | 74% |
Jul - Sep 20 | 95% | 83% | 72% |
Oct – Dec 20 | 94% | 78% | 72% |
Jan - Mar 21 | 91% | 80% | 72% |
Apr - Jun 21 | 89% | 78% | 74% |
Jul - Sep 21 | 90% | 75% | 72% |
Oct – Dec 21 | 87% | 76% | 68% |
Jan - Mar 22 | 87% | 84% | 63% |
Apr - Jun 22 | 85% | 79% | 64% |
Jul - Sep 22 | 89% | 73% | 64% |
Oct – Dec 22 | 90% | 77% | 65% |
Jan - Mar 23 | 89% | 78% | 65% |
Apr - Jun 23 | 87% | 77% | 67% |
Jul - Sep 23 | 87% | 72% | 69% |
Oct – Dec 23 | 87% | 74% | 68% |
Jan - Mar 24 | 87% | 76% | 69% |
Apr - Jun 24 | 85% | 77% | 69% |
Jul - Sep 24 | 90% | 79% | 68% |
Oct – Dec 24 | [x] | [x] | 68% |
Source: CMS statistics, Stat-Xplore
Notes:
Since 2020, as part of the DWP Service Modernisation Programme, the CMS has been undergoing extensive improvements to increase the quality and range of online services available to separated parents. This program has transformed how customers can interact with CMS, providing them with the choice to make contact through digital routes while ensuring that assistance is available for those who need additional support and non-digital customers via the telephone service. These improvements have allowed case workers to focus more on actioning their work. The wide-reaching programme aims to continue to reform and modernise CMS services with increased effectiveness and efficiency.
Additionally, the CMS has amended its service to allow Direct Pay arrangements to quickly move to Collect and Pay when the Paying Parent is not paying or when Direct Pay is no longer appropriate. 14,000 arrangements moved from Direct Pay to Collect and Pay in the quarter ending December 2024 meaning CMS are collecting money for children quicker.
In the quarter ending December 2024, over 1 million children were covered by CMS arrangements, an increase of 61,000 from the quarter ending December 2023.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what was the Child Maintenance Service helpline's performance in responding to phone calls against its service level standards.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service are committed to delivering the best possible service to all customers. We continuously monitor telephony performance and through this fully recognise that call waiting times are at times longer than we would like. To address this, we are working extensively to improve the efficiency of our customer interactions through both telephone and digital channels. We introduced the Digital Assist Telephony Service September 2024, which has been a significant step forward in our mission to support and encourage customers to use our online services. We restructured our call routing October 2024 to make more caseworkers available to answer telephone calls. By promoting self-service options online and efficient call routing, we have freed up valuable resources to deliver a more responsive service and allow caseworkers more time to better assist customers who need to reach out to us via telephone. Additionally, we have extended the telephony service to 6pm on weekdays to meet demand. and our online services are available to all customers 24/7. The Department publishes quarterly statistics for the Child Maintenance Service and the latest statistics are currently available to December 2024. Table 12 of the latest National tables shows the percentage of calls to the CMS that were answered each quarter, from January 2015 to December 2024. Latest published quarterly telephony performance for the period Oct to December 2024 was 75% for Percentage of calls answered. |
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many irregular migrants have been given a National Insurance Number in each year since 2020.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP does not issue National Insurance Numbers to irregular migrants. The department is responsible for the allocation of National Insurance Numbers to adults in the UK, and all applicants are required to provide evidence of their identity and information to prove they have the right to work in the UK. This is the only circumstance in which applicants will be granted a National Insurance number.
The information provided by applicants is corroborated against other Government Department systems before a National Insurance Number is allocated.
We publish quarterly data on the number of adult overseas nationals entering the UK that have received a National Insurance number, please see the link below for more information.
National Insurance number allocations to adult overseas nationals entering the UK - GOV.UK
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an estimate of the total (a) value and (b) number of payments made by her Department to Motability in each year since 2010.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department for Work and Pensions retains financial information for 7 years in compliance with the fifth principle of the Data Protection Act, therefore we are unable to provide historic data back to 2010. We can provide the requested estimated total Motability values data for the previous three calendar years, DWP has paid:
2022 - c£607 million
2023 - c£600 million
2024 - c£600 million
We are unable to provide volumes data, and value data for earlier years within the timescales required for this request, due to the time required to interrogate our systems to obtain this level of information.