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 making the one-off civil servant cost-of-living payment available to retired civil servant staff who were employed in the civil service in the year 31 March 2022 to 1 April 2023.

DWP must abide by the Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance. This is the published by the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury.

The Addendum to the Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance for 2023/24 guidance states; ‘for 2023/24, departments covered by the Pay Remit Guidance have flexibility to make a fixed non-consolidated payment of £1,500 per full-time employee for those in delegated grades, subject to eligibility’.

The Addendum guidance stipulated that civil servants ‘need to have been in post both on 31 March 2023 and still in post on the date of payment.’

For DWP employees, the payment was made in July 2023, and our guidance stated: ‘you must have been employed within the Civil Service on 31^st March 2023 and employed by DWP 1^st July 2023.’

It is not possible for DWP to confer eligibility to employees who were not in post on these dates, as this would be outside of the parameters of the Remit Guidance.