Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what impact the introduction of the online system for the determination of Access to Work applications has had on waiting times.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Access to Work team have introduced an improved online application service within the last quarter of 2023. Within the improved application there are more detailed questions on conditions and needs. It is envisioned that processing times may decrease due to the reduction in queries made on applications. We are still gathering data on the improved digital service for evaluation.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 15 of the Fourth Special Report of the Work and Pensions Committee of Session 2021-22 on Disability employment gap: Government Response to the Committee’s Second Report of Session 2021–22, HC 866, published on 22 November 2021, when he expects delivery of a fully digital customer service to be complete.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
People are currently able to apply online for Access to Work grants. Some types of grants may be claimed online. We anticipate by April 2024 that a fully digital service will be available, with applicants able to claim for all types of grants.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
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 claimants who would be within the scope of Clause 128 and Schedule 11 of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill; and how many receive (a) the state pension, (b) Personal Independence Payment and (c) child benefit as the only relevant benefit.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Fraud is a growing problem across the economy, accounting for over 40% of all crime in 2022. This problem exists in the welfare system too, with fraud becoming increasingly sophisticated and on a scale not seen in the past. The introduction of the third party data measure is key to helping DWP tackle and reduce fraud and error which amounted to £8.3bn last year (2022-23).
The legislation is clear that the proposed power can only be used to help establish eligibility for DWP benefits that are being paid to individuals. This power requires third parties to look within their own data and provide relevant information to DWP that may signal where DWP claimants do not meet the eligibility criteria for the benefit they are receiving. This data may signal fraud or error and require a further review by DWP – through business-as-usual processes - to determine whether wrongful payments are being made. Only minimal information will ever be shared by designated third parties with DWP where there is a three-way relationship - between DWP, the claimant and the third party - to enable us to make further enquiries. No personal information will be shared by DWP with third parties.
DWP cannot exercise this power in relation to Child Benefit, because Child Benefit is not a DWP payment as the legislation sets out. Last year, DWP administered payments of £230.5 billion through the welfare system and we know the vast majority of these claims are paid correctly and accurately. Our measure will only impact a minority of people who are potentially receiving more money than they are eligible to receive.
As the Regulatory Impact Assessment sets out, the initial use of this power will be focused on identification of potential capital and abroad fraud and error in Universal Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, Pension Credit and Housing Benefit (passported from Pension Credit) cases. Failure to declare or under-declaring capital is consistently in the top causes of Fraud and Error and cost £894m million in Universal Credit overpayments, £138m in Pension Credit and £167m in ESA in 2022-23. The current powers DWP has are limited and leave the Department unable to address this challenge at scale. The third-party data gathering measure will enable DWP to better access relevant data which will help identify fraud and error in the system.
As trends in fraud and error change, it is right we have the ability, in the future, to exercise this power across all benefits and payments that are administered by DWP.
Affirmative regulations, and a statutory Code of Practice, will need to be brought forward before the Department can use these powers to define the specific data holder in scope and to outline other elements relating to the use of the power.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the oral contribution of 22 November 2023 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Official Report, column 348, what the value of the Household Support Fund will be in 2024-25.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government has provided over £2 billion in funding for the Household Support Fund since October 2021.
The current Household Support Fund runs from April 2023 until the end of March 2024.
No further decisions have been taken on the Household Support Fund, and the government continues to keep all its existing programmes under review in the usual way.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the (a) financial and (b) practical implications for Universal Credit claimants of 53 charging days for rent in 2024.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Universal Credit always converts weekly amounts to monthly sums using 52 weeks. The issue of there being 53 rent charging days in a year is relevant only for Universal Credit (UC) claimants who have their rent charged on a weekly basis and have 53 charging periods in a calendar year.
UC claimants in the Social Rented Sector are typically charged rent weekly every Monday and so in a typical year their 12 monthly UC payments will align with the 52 charging periods. Every six years, or five if including a leap year, they will have 53 charging periods. In 2024 there will be 53 of these periods with the 53rd rent payment occurring on the final day of the calendar year. 53 charging periods will not apply in all UC claims and some claimants will not have a 53 charging period year during the life of their benefit claim.
We have considered alternative options for those with weekly tenancies, but each have their own limitations and disadvantages for claimants. The matter occurs because weekly charging periods can never be accurately aligned with monthly periods. Tenants of social housing providers are used to managing varying outgoings every month depending on whether four or five rent payments are due – not just during a year in which there are 53 charging periods.
Discretionary Housing Payments can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs. Since 2011, the government has provided nearly £1.7 billion in Discretionary Housing Payments to local authorities.
We do not have forecasts for this group for 2024. The most recent data from DWP’s statistical release platform Stat-Xplore is for August 2023 which shows that there were 1,664,104 Social Rented Sector households receiving housing support through UC, of which the department’s analysts estimate that approximately 1.4 million (85%) were charged weekly.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
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 Universal Credit claimants who will have 53 charging days for rent in 2024.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Universal Credit always converts weekly amounts to monthly sums using 52 weeks. The issue of there being 53 rent charging days in a year is relevant only for Universal Credit (UC) claimants who have their rent charged on a weekly basis and have 53 charging periods in a calendar year.
UC claimants in the Social Rented Sector are typically charged rent weekly every Monday and so in a typical year their 12 monthly UC payments will align with the 52 charging periods. Every six years, or five if including a leap year, they will have 53 charging periods. In 2024 there will be 53 of these periods with the 53rd rent payment occurring on the final day of the calendar year. 53 charging periods will not apply in all UC claims and some claimants will not have a 53 charging period year during the life of their benefit claim.
We have considered alternative options for those with weekly tenancies, but each have their own limitations and disadvantages for claimants. The matter occurs because weekly charging periods can never be accurately aligned with monthly periods. Tenants of social housing providers are used to managing varying outgoings every month depending on whether four or five rent payments are due – not just during a year in which there are 53 charging periods.
Discretionary Housing Payments can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs. Since 2011, the government has provided nearly £1.7 billion in Discretionary Housing Payments to local authorities.
We do not have forecasts for this group for 2024. The most recent data from DWP’s statistical release platform Stat-Xplore is for August 2023 which shows that there were 1,664,104 Social Rented Sector households receiving housing support through UC, of which the department’s analysts estimate that approximately 1.4 million (85%) were charged weekly.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 14 November to Question 17 on Universal Credit, if he will estimate the number of working Universal Credit recipients who received an incorrect Universal Credit payment as a result of an employer's incorrect real time information submission to HMRC in the latest month for which data is available.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
For the last 12 months, UC has received around 29 million RTI feeds to calculate UC payments for those households with employed earnings. Where errors affect UC entitlement, payments are corrected as part of normal business.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many real time information disputes were raised by Universal Credit claimants between 1 January and 31 December 2022.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Real Time Information (RTI) system is working well with over 99% of individual employment records now being reported in real time. In most cases, Real Time Information (RTI), supplied by employers, is an efficient and accurate method of calculating Universal Credit payments. Less than 1% resulted in RTI disputes between 1 January and 31 December 2022, around a fifth of these were found to contain an error by employers - around 0.2% of total RTI returns.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Universal Credit claims were subject to deductions; how much on average was deducted; what the total sum of deductions was; what proportion of each of those sums was deducted to repay advance payments in each local authority in the 2021-22 financial year; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The requested analysis of Universal Credit claims with deductions, in the 2021-22 financial year, by Local Authority in Great Britain (GB) is provided in the separate spreadsheet, with the following points to note:
1. Average deduction amounts have been rounded to the nearest £1 and proportions have been rounded to the nearest percentage point. The sum of individual constituencies may not sum to the total figure due to rounding.
2. Deductions include advance repayments, third party deductions and all other deductions, but exclude sanctions and fraud penalties which are reductions of benefit rather than deductions.
3. The' unknown' parliamentary constituency label relates to claims for which a constituency could not be determined due to incomplete postcode information. Unknown parliamentary constituency accounts for 0.2% of all UC households.
4. In April 2021, the maximum deductions limit was reduced from 30% of the standard allowance to 25%. In May 2021, the additional court fines deduction was removed lowering the rate to 5% of standard allowance.
5. "Advances" include all four UC advance types: New Claim, Benefit Transfer, Budgeting and Change of Circumstances.
6. The table includes the number of distinct Universal Credit households subject to a deduction in the period 2021-2022. Any household with deductions in more than one assessment period within the period requested will only be counted once. Deduction amount represents the total deduction taken for a particular household. So if a household has multiple deductions in the same assessment period these figures provide the total of all deductions taken.
7. Figures are provisional and are subject to retrospective change as later data becomes available.
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Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many work coaches were in post at the end of October (a) 2021, (b) 2022 and (c) 2023.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The table below shows the total number of Work Coach Full Time Equivalents (FTE) in Jobcentres (JC) at the end of October for 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Work Coach | ABM FTE | ||
Oct-21 | Oct-22 | Oct-23 | |
JC Work Coach excl DEA - Full Service | 17,360 | 12,580 | 12,850 |
JC Work Coach excl DEA - Existing Benefits | 2,320 | 1,870 | 1,300 |
Total | 19,680 | 14,440 | 14,150 |
Source: DWP’s internal Activity Based Model (ABM)
Notes:
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