Asked by: Darren Paffey (Labour - Southampton Itchen)
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 ensure that the needs of domestic violence victims are considered in reforms to the welfare system.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Pathways to Work Green Paper consulted on how DWP could improve safeguarding processes. Domestic violence, along with all other safeguarding needs, is included in this. The department has set up a multidisciplinary team with an expert safeguarding advisor and is in the processes of completing a full review. We have engaged with experts and stakeholders through a consultation and round tables and will update the house in due course.
DWP is fully committed to the prevention of abuse and ensuring that victims/survivors get the support they need when they need it. DWP Jobcentres are a safe space with Domestic Abuse trained Work Coaches who provide support to victims/survivors of domestic abuse, for example assisting with new Universal Credit claims, work-related easements, special provisions for temporary accommodation, same day advances, and signposting to expert third-party services.
All DWP policies related to domestic abuse are relevant to any victim/survivor, irrespective of sex, gender, age, ethnicity, socio-economic status, sexuality, or background.
Asked by: Graeme Downie (Labour - Dunfermline and Dollar)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of raising Statutory Sick Pay for the parents and carers of children with severe health conditions.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Statutory Sick Pay provides financial support to individual employees who are sick or incapable of work. It is not designed to provide financial support for parents or carers who are not able to work because their child is sick or has a health condition.
Parents who cannot work because their child is sick, rather than being directly incapable of work due to sickness themselves, have a number of options open to them such as asking their employer if they can work flexibly or requesting to take emergency leave. Parents may also be eligible to apply for welfare benefits, such as Carer's allowance or Universal Credit, depending on their circumstances.
The Department for Business and Trade is currently developing a consultation on employment rights for carers, including specific measures for the parents and carers of seriously ill children. This will consider what employment rights may help families in such distressing situations. The consultation will take place in 2026.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has had discussions with employers on (a) the adequacy of employer sick pay top-up schemes and (b) their role in supporting workers with long-term health conditions.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The government has engaged extensively, including with employers, on the impact of our plan to strengthen Statutory Sick Pay. While employers can choose to go further than their statutory requirements and provide more financial support to their employees when they are sick, and around 60% of all employees report they are eligible for this extra support, our engagement has not included the adequacy of contractual or occupational sick pay schemes. Those who need additional financial support while off sick are able to claim more help through the welfare system such as Universal Credit, depending on their individual circumstances.
In our Get Britain Working White Paper, published November 2024, we committed support for employers to recruit, retain, and develop staff. As part of that, the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and Business and Trade have asked Sir Charlie Mayfield to lead ‘Keep Britain Working’, an independent review to consider how best to support and enable employers to recruit and retain more people with health conditions and disabilities, promote healthy workplaces, and support more people to stay in or return to work from periods of sickness absence.
Following the discovery publication in March 2025, Sir Charlie and the review team engaged with a broad range of stakeholders, including employers. In total there were over 500 individual submissions and over 150 meetings and events through which evidence was submitted. Sir Charlie Mayfield will deliver a final report with recommendations in the autumn.
The Disability Confident (DC) Scheme encourages employers to create disability inclusive workplaces and to support disabled people to get work and get on in work. It provides employers with the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to attract, recruit, retain and develop disabled people in the workplace and to take positive action to address the issues disabled employees face.
Officials have been discussing with stakeholders, including employers, the options for making the DC scheme criteria more robust. The Government is working towards announcing next steps for improving the scheme later this autumn
Asked by: Lord Carter of Haslemere (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask His Majesty's Government, in relation to paragraph 24 of Schedule 1 to the Renters' Rights Bill, whether the protection for tenants from enforcement of rent arrears in respect of delayed universal credit payments apply only in respect of the first universal credit payment; and if so, whether this is consistent with the wording of the Bill which does not state it is limited.
Answered by Baroness Taylor of Stevenage - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Renters’ Rights Bill will introduce new protections for tenants who temporarily fall into rent arrears, supporting both parties by preventing tenancies which are otherwise viable from ending. We will protect tenants from eviction if their arrears are due to the timing of a relevant welfare payment. Tenants will not face mandatory eviction under Ground 8 if they breach the three months arrears threshold because they have not yet received a Universal Credit payment for housing costs which they have been assessed as entitled to.
As Universal Credit is assessed every month, the protection period will apply in any period between the end of an assessment period and the relevant Universal Credit payment, which can usually be up to five days.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of (a) prevention and (b) detection measures used to identify fraudulent claims for Universal Credit by foreign nationals.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This government takes all cases of fraud seriously and has introduced the biggest package of measures in recent history to reduce welfare fraud, error and debt, which includes new legislation, the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill. This contains new powers to modernise our defences and is currently progressing through Parliament.
In 2024-25, we saved an estimated £25bn from our up-front controls and detect activity, with the latter delivering £2bn savings and thereby significantly exceeding our Annually Managed Expenditure savings target.
The Department always checks a person’s identity and immigration status before paying them benefits if they are a foreign national. We verify this information with the Home Office, including through automatic system-to-system checks.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will publish the number of foreign nationals in receipt of each benefit across working age welfare spending.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
There are no plans to start consistently collecting nationality data across all working age benefits. This is because DWP policy responsibility lies in establishing a customer’s eligibility to claim benefits. An individual’s specific nationality does not play a role in this.
The Department checks immigration status when assessing eligibility for benefits, but this information is not collated centrally across all benefit lines and hence is not readily available.
The Department publishes Universal Credit (UC) immigration status and nationality statistics as part of the Universal Credit statistics publication. The latest release of these statistics is included in the latest Universal Credit statistical bulletin. ‘Table 2’ in the latest Universal Credit immigration status and nationality data tables provides information on the number of people on Universal Credit by immigration status, nationality group and employment status, for each month from April 2022 to June 2025.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant the Answer of 2 September to Question 69743 on Universal Credit: Expenditure, whether she has had discussions with the OBR on the sustainability of the forecasted levels of expenditure on Universal Credit payments by the end of the current Parliament.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government is committed to a social security system which raises employment and living standards by supporting and incentivising people into work and to work more, reduces poverty by supporting people at times of higher cost and dependency, and promotes fairness and controls overall spending to ensure the long-term sustainability of the system for future generations. The Government’s welfare cap rule also helps ensure the long-term sustainability of the welfare system. A new welfare cap covering the current parliament was introduced at Autumn Budget 2024.
The financial sustainability of the benefit system, including Universal Credit, is considered in the round as part of the forecasts for annually managed expenditure which are produced twice yearly as part of the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast process.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to ensure compliance with benefit eligibility rules by foreign nationals.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department applies strict compliance and benefit eligibility checks to all claimants regardless of their nationality. In addition to verifying a claimant’s identity, DWP checks that claimants are habitually resident here before they can receive public funds benefits including Universal Credit. DWP also applies strict past presence requirements to ensure that claimants of disability and carer benefits have a substantial and recent connection to this country before they can claim. In addition, DWP always checks a person’s immigration status before paying them benefits if they are a foreign national. We verify this information with the Home Office, including through automatic system-to-system checks.
This Government takes all cases of fraud seriously and has introduced the biggest package of measures in recent history to reduce welfare fraud, error and debt, which includes new legislation, the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill. This contains new powers to modernise our defences and is currently progressing through Parliament.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of reforming the (a) structure or (b) allocation of the welfare budget.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government is committed to a social security system which raises employment and living standards by supporting and incentivising people into work and to work more, reduces poverty by supporting people at times of higher cost and dependency, and promotes fairness and controls overall spending to ensure the long-term sustainability of the system for future generations. The Government’s welfare cap rule also helps ensure the long-term sustainability of the welfare system. A new welfare cap covering the current parliament was introduced at Autumn Budget 2024.
The financial sustainability of the benefit system is considered in the round as part of the forecasts for annually managed expenditure which are produced twice yearly as part of the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast process.
At Spring Statement 2025 the OBR forecast that expenditure on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from £75.8billion in 2025/26 to £88.9billion in 2029/30 – with Universal Credit expenditure representing a similar share of GDP in 2029/30 as in 2025/26. The number of households on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from 6.3million in 2025/26 to 6.8million over that time period. The OBR will provide a further update as part of the Autumn Budget.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 the increasing number of people receiving Universal Credit to the British taxpayer.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government is committed to a social security system which raises employment and living standards by supporting and incentivising people into work and to work more, reduces poverty by supporting people at times of higher cost and dependency, and promotes fairness and controls overall spending to ensure the long-term sustainability of the system for future generations. The Government’s welfare cap rule also helps ensure the long-term sustainability of the welfare system. A new welfare cap covering the current parliament was introduced at Autumn Budget 2024.
The financial sustainability of the benefit system is considered in the round as part of the forecasts for annually managed expenditure which are produced twice yearly as part of the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast process.
At Spring Statement 2025 the OBR forecast that expenditure on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from £75.8billion in 2025/26 to £88.9billion in 2029/30 – with Universal Credit expenditure representing a similar share of GDP in 2029/30 as in 2025/26. The number of households on Universal Credit is forecast to increase from 6.3million in 2025/26 to 6.8million over that time period. The OBR will provide a further update as part of the Autumn Budget.