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Written Question
Coronavirus: Schools
Monday 23rd October 2023

Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 30 June 2022 to Question 22411 on Coronavirus: Schools, whether she has provided guidance to schools on the findings of the Rapid Covid-19 Air Disinfection Study; if she will place a copy of the findings of that study in the Library; and if she will make a statement.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Rapid Covid-19 Air Disinfection Study, which has been renamed the Bradford classroom air cleaning technology (class-ACT) trial, is a project looking at the implications and potential benefits of fitting schools with air cleaning technology.

This trial was funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and managed through the UK Health Security Agency. The study is run from the Centre for Applied Education Research which is based at the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. Officials from the Department for Education sat on the working group of the trial. The trial has concluded and the academic leads intend to make the results available by publishing in a peer reviewed journal in due course. As the results have not yet been published, no guidance has been provided.

The Department recognises that good ventilation can reduce the spread of respiratory infections and has provided CO2 monitors to all eligible state funded settings in England. These monitors enable staff to identify areas where ventilation needs to be improved and provide reassurance that existing ventilation measures are working. This helps balance the need for good ventilation and keeping classrooms warm. The Department has also provided over 9,000 air cleaning units (ACUs) to over 1,300 settings that had sustained high CO2 readings of above 1500ppm. These ACUs work through high efficiency particulate air filter technology.


Written Question
Coronavirus: Vaccination
Friday 18th November 2022

Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 8 November 2022 to Question 77275 on Coronavirus: Vaccination, what (a) criteria and (b) guidance is used by medical assessors to ensure the consistency of assessment across cases of (i) multi-system inflammatory syndrome and (ii) other auto-immune responses as a result of a covid-19 vaccine when interpreting the criteria of the (A) Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, (B) schedule 2 of the Social Security (General Benefit) Regulations 1982 and (C) section 103 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

All claims are assessed using a consistent approach, regardless of the type of case. To ensure consistency, the NHS Business Services Authority has recently introduced sampling to quality assure medical assessments. This allows claims to be progressed more rapidly while ensuring the high standards required, in line with Schedule 2 of the Social Security (General Benefit) Regulations 1982 and Section 103 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992.

Guidance and resources to support medical assessments include but are not limited to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s data such as Yellow Card reports; vaccine product information updates; the Green Book; other research; and systematic reviews such the Cochrane library.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Coronavirus
Tuesday 15th November 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an estimate of the cost of applying the £20 per week uplift to legacy benefit recipients which was provided to recipients of Universal Credit during the period covering the outbreak of covid-19.

Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

No such assessment has been made and it would incur disproportionate costs to make an estimate.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Coronavirus
Tuesday 8th March 2022

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

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 tackle situations in which benefits may have been wrongly ended as a result of a lack of medical evidence related to the covid-19 outbreak.

Answered by Chloe Smith

DWP is not aware that there is a widespread issue where claims have been wrongly ended as a result of a lack of medical evidence. It might be helpful to note that to ensure ESA claimants received their payments on time, there was an easement in place on the requirement for medical evidence from the start of pandemic until summer 2020, when claimants could not easily access GPs. A similar easement was also applied between 17 December 2021 and 26 January 2022, to allow GPs to support the Covid-19 vaccine booster campaign.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Coronavirus
Friday 4th March 2022

Asked by: Marion Fellows (Scottish National Party - Motherwell and Wishaw)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans her Department has to support legacy benefit recipients who have been financially impacted by the covid-19 pandemic.

Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

Since the start of the pandemic, DWP has spent over £11.9bn to help families by investing in additional welfare and employment support. From 24 March, the COVID-19 provisions in the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) regulations will end. There are no other remaining legacy benefit provisions relating to COVID-19, but a wide range of benefits and other support is available to people who are receiving legacy benefits, subject to the normal conditions of entitlement.

The Government is committed to supporting families most in need, spending billions more on welfare and planning a long-term route out of poverty, by helping people to increase their hours in employment or to find new work through our Plan for Jobs and the new Way to Work campaign.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Coronavirus
Friday 18th February 2022

Asked by: Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of benefit claims made when controls were suspended during the covid-19 outbreak have been reviewed by the Department; and where the Department found an inaccuracy, in how many cases the Department identified (a) fraud and (b) claimant error as the source of the inaccuracy.

Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

The Department has taken huge steps to reduce and minimise fraud and error, including during the last 20 months, at a time where the Department processed an additional 3 million new Universal Credit claims.

We have revisited over 900,000 high risk claims paid during the early period of Covid-19 with incorrectness being found in just over 11% of the claims reviewed. Internal records do not enable us to split the overpayments we found between fraud and claimant error.

Any overpayments identified will have been referred to DWP’s Debt Management Team for recovery action. The DWP’s Debt Management IT systems does not allows us to track these particular cases.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Coronavirus
Friday 18th February 2022

Asked by: Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of benefit claims made when controls were suspended during the covid-19 outbreak have subsequently been reviewed by her Department; and in how many cases was (a) an overpayment identified (b) recovery action initiated.

Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

The Department has taken huge steps to reduce and minimise fraud and error, including during the last 20 months, at a time where the Department processed an additional 3 million new Universal Credit claims.

We have revisited over 900,000 high risk claims paid during the early period of Covid-19 with incorrectness being found in just over 11% of the claims reviewed. Internal records do not enable us to split the overpayments we found between fraud and claimant error.

Any overpayments identified will have been referred to DWP’s Debt Management Team for recovery action. The DWP’s Debt Management IT systems does not allows us to track these particular cases.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Coronavirus
Monday 31st January 2022

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of people affected by administrative errors made by her Department which led to the overpayment of benefits in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England during the covid-19 outbreak.

Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

The Department does not hold Official Error data, or details of subsequent hardships requests for a reduction in the rate of repayment, by geographical area.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Coronavirus
Monday 31st January 2022

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of people affected by administrative errors made by her Department which led to financial hardship for claimants in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England during the covid-19 outbreak.

Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

The Department does not hold Official Error data, or details of subsequent hardships requests for a reduction in the rate of repayment, by geographical area.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Coronavirus
Wednesday 22nd December 2021

Asked by: Lord Stunell (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to allow jobseekers to establish their benefit status online rather than in person to reduce their risk of exposure to COVID-19.

Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott

Customers claiming Universal Credit, New Style JSA and ESA already do so online. Many parts of the verification process, which is essential to check an individual’s eligibility to claim, is also carried out online. To protect Universal Credit from the risk of fraud, in some cases we require face to face verification activity in a COVID secure environment.

Key workers will continue to deliver essential services, including in jobcentres, across the UK. Anyone who needs to get support or other vital services from our jobcentres will be able to continue to do so in an environment that is safe and compliant with COVID regulations. Telephone appointments can be arranged for customers who prefer to receive support virtually. We ask customers who do come in-person to take a lateral flow test and follow all the safety measures to help reduce the spread of COVID.