Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of basing eligibility for Free Childcare For Working Parents on household rather than individual income.
Answered by Darren Jones - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Eligibility is assessed on a per person rather than per household basis because the application is made by the individual, it aligns to the existing boundary in the tax system and means there is no incentive for the lower earner in the household to reduce their income in order to be eligible. The eligibility criteria are kept under review.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she has made an assessment she has made of the potential merits of extending (a) a discount on and (b) an exemption from vehicle excise duty to people receiving Attendance Allowance.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is committed to supporting disabled people and is determined that support should be focused on people who need it most. The aim of existing Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) exemptions for recipients of some disability benefits is to provide additional help for people who become disabled early, or relatively early, in life and as a result experience economic disadvantage. These allowances are therefore only available to people who become disabled before State Pension age.
For individuals who develop a disability after State Pension age, Attendance Allowance (AA) is a non-means-tested benefit which provides targeted help with the extra costs of disability and helps them maintain their independence. Unlike Disability Living Allowance and Personal Independence Payment, AA does not have a mobility component and is intended to cover the need for care or supervision an individual requires as a result of their disability rather than specific mobility needs. Individuals can however choose to use their AA to fund mobility aids.
The Government keeps all taxes under review as part of the policy making process, and the Chancellor makes decisions at fiscal events in the context of public finances.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she plans to review the Equitable Life payment scheme.
Answered by Tulip Siddiq - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Equitable Life Payment Scheme has been fully wound down and closed since 2016, and there are no plans to reopen any decisions relating to the Payment Scheme or review the £1.5 billion funding allocation previously made to it. Further guidance on the status of the Payment Scheme after closure is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equitable-life-payment-scheme#closure-of-the-scheme.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much his Department has paid in compensation to affected Equitable Life policyholders as of 8 February 2024.
Answered by Bim Afolami
The Government allocated £1.5 billion to the Equitable Life Payment Scheme. Before it ceased operations in 2016, the Scheme issued £1.12 billion in tax-free payments to nearly 933,000 policyholders. The remainder of the £1.5 billion has been set aside for future payments to the With-Profits Annuitants. Further information is available in the Final Report on the Scheme. (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equitable-life-payment-scheme-final-report).
At 31 December 2023, the total value of payments made by the Equitable Life Payment Scheme was £1,330,835,466.52.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many times officials in his Department have met affected Equitable Life policyholders in the last 12 months.
Answered by Bim Afolami
The Government allocated £1.5 billion to the Equitable Life Payment Scheme. Before it ceased operations in 2016, the Scheme issued £1.12 billion in tax-free payments to nearly 933,000 policyholders. The remainder of the £1.5 billion has been set aside for future payments to the With-Profits Annuitants. Further information is available in the Final Report on the Scheme. (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equitable-life-payment-scheme-final-report).
At 31 December 2023, the total value of payments made by the Equitable Life Payment Scheme was £1,330,835,466.52.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what his Department's planned timescale is for returning to spending 0.7% of Gross National Income on Official Development Assistance.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The Government remains committed to returning to a target of spending 0.7% of GNI on ODA when, on a sustainable basis, the government is not borrowing for day-to-day spending and underlying debt is falling.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will publish a breakdown of the specific spending on the plan to increase the availability of mental health and musculoskeletal resources and expand the Individual Placement and Support scheme.
Answered by John Glen
The breakdown of spending on mental health and musculoskeletal resources, and employment advisors in health settings, including expansion of Individual Placement and Support, announced at Spring Budget 2023 is set out in the Budget document which is available here: Spring Budget 2023 (publishing.service.gov.uk) (lines 12 and 13, Table 4.1 on page 76). The figures in the table have been adjusted to include Barnett consequentials.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the Mental Health Breathing Space Scheme, how many people (a) have accessed that scheme in each year to 30 June 2022 and (b) are estimated to access that scheme in the next 12 months.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
The Insolvency Service publishes official statistics on the breathing space scheme as part of its Monthly Insolvency Statistics series, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/monthly-insolvency-statistics.
In the period from 4 May 2021 (when the scheme started) to 31 May 2022, there were 1,123 mental health breathing space registrations.
Data for June 2022 will be published in mid-July.
HM Treasury has not produced up-to-date estimates for the number of mental health breathing space registrations expected in the next 12 months.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for what reason furlough pay for people who were originally furloughed in March 2020 and have retained their job is determined solely by their pre-pandemic earnings, including in circumstances where those people went on to work more hours in the months between the March and November 2020 covid-19 lockdowns.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) was designed to operate at significant scale to sustain individuals at 80% of their pre-coronavirus income, up to a maximum grant of £2,500 per month. It was therefore right that the default reference pay period to calculate CJRS was that of the pre-coronavirus period for those claiming prior to 31 October.
For the extended scheme from 1 November, the Government appreciates that a minority of employees may have seen an increase in earnings during the pandemic, but others have not, and therefore to be fair to all claimants the default reference pay period for those employees in continuous employment since claiming has remained at the pre-coronavirus period.
For newer employees, it was simply not possible to refer to a pre-coronavirus period, and therefore the reference pay period is necessarily different for this group.
Using the pre-coronavirus reference pay period to calculate the CJRS grant means that it is not necessary to recalculate the basis of the claim for the greatest number of employees and employers.
While a decision for employers to make alone, the terms of the scheme do allow for employers to make a top-up payment should they deem this affordable and appropriate.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he is taking to ensure that self-employed people who have recently taken (a) maternity leave and (b) extended sick leave and make a claim for support through the Self-employment Income Support Scheme do not have their average earnings calculated in a way that will disadvantage their payment.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The new Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) will help those with lost trading profits due to COVID-19. It means the UK will have one of the most generous self-employed COVID-19 support schemes in the world.
The new scheme will allow eligible individuals to claim a taxable grant worth 80% of their trading profits up to a maximum of £2,500 per month for 3 months. Self-employed individuals, including members of partnerships, are eligible if they have submitted their Income Tax Self Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19, continued to trade and have lost trading/partnership trading profits due to COVID-19.
Taking maternity leave, paternity leave, or sick leave does not mean that the trade has ceased and therefore should not affect a person’s eligibility for the SEISS as long as the individual intends to return to the trade after the period of leave.
To qualify for the SEISS, an individual’s self-employed trading profits must be less than £50,000, with more than half of their income from self-employment. Delivering a scheme for the self-employed is a very difficult operational challenge, particularly in the time available. There is no way for HM Revenue & Customs to know the reasons why an individual’s profits may have dropped in earlier years from Self Assessment returns.
However, to help those with volatile income in 2018-19 for whatever reason, an individual is eligible for the SEISS if their trading profits are no more than £50,000 and at least half of their total income, for either the tax year 2018-19 or the average of the tax years 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19. If eligible, they will receive a taxable grant based on their average trading profit over the three tax years, including in years where their trading profits were less than half their total income.