Tag: Debbie Abrahams

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2016-07-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department plans to take in response to the Report of the Transparency Taskforce, published in May 2016, on the costs and hidden fees associated with investments and pensions.

Richard Harrington

The Government remains committed to increasing transparency and ensuring that members of pension schemes are able to obtain information about the costs and charges which they bear.

Governance bodies of defined contribution workplace pension schemes are obliged, under existing requirements, to assess costs and charges. We and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) are actively considering how to achieve greater transparency and standardisation of transaction costs, and the FCA plans to publish a consultation later this year.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2015-11-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research his Department has conducted into the likelihood of people who get primary breast cancer twice getting secondary breast cancer.

George Freeman

The Department does not itself conduct research, and has not funded research on this specific topic.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2015-12-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many patients with a diagnosis of dementia (a) attended A&E and (b) were admitted to hospital in each of the last three years.

Jane Ellison

In the Hospital Episode Statistics data it is not possible to identify patients that attended accident and emergency with a diagnosis of dementia.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre have provided a count of finished admission episodes (FAEs) where there was a primary diagnosis of dementia for the years 2012-13 to 2014-15. This is shown in Table A.

Note that this is not a count of people as the same person may have had more than one admission episode within the same time period.

Table A: Count of FAEs where there was a primary diagnosis of dementia for the years 2012-13 to 2014-15

Year	Sum of FAEs
2012-13	19,274
2013-14	17,939
2014-15	18,732

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Health and Social Care Information Centre

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2016-02-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will commission an evaluation of the effectiveness of support for former Independent Living Fund recipients.

Justin Tomlinson

The Government has committed to conducting research on the impact of the Fund’s closure and has already identified a sample of former users who have agreed to participate.

The Government believes that local authorities are best placed to provide for the care needs of people in their local community. The Care Act 2014 introduced stringent minimum standards for this care and it is within this context that local authorities took over responsibility for the care and support of former Independent Living Fund users from 1st July 2015.

The Government has fully-funded local authorities to meet their additional obligations to service users previously in receipt of the Independent Living Fund for the remainder of the 2015/16 financial year and there will continue to be a separate grant to support them for 2016-17. Under proposals currently being consulted on, the Government will also enable local authorities to continue to fully fund the care packages of former Independent Living Fund users for the remainder of the parliament.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2016-03-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many disability living allowance claimants he expects to transfer to personal independence payment in each year to 2020.

Justin Tomlinson

We are rolling out Personal Independence Payment (PIP) to existing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) claimants in a controlled way. We will continue to monitor performance and will carefully control the number of people we choose to invite to claim PIP each month.

The forecast estimates for the numbers of people in receipt of Disability Living Allowance we currently expect to be awarded PIP, in each year to 2020, are in the table below and may be subject to change:

2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20
450,000	550,000	350,000	50,000

Notes:

Data rounded to the nearest 50,000

Includes both adults and children reaching age 16

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2016-03-24.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to paragraph 2.59 of the Summer Budget 2015, if he will make an assessment of the potential effect of restricting finance cost relief for landlords on the ability of private individuals who operate buy-to-let businesses with large private buy-to-let companies.

Harriett Baldwin

An individual’s property income is subject to a separate set of tax rules to those of a private company.

Once the changes are fully in place by 2020-21, all individuals will get finance cost relief at the basic rate of income tax, 20%. Incorporated businesses will continue to receive relief at the corporate tax rate which is currently 20% and due to fall to 17% in 2020.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2016-05-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS trusts conform to the Accessible Information Standard.

Alistair Burt

NHS England published the Accessible Information Standard in July 2015. Compliance with the Standard is a legal duty and organisations that provide National Health Service care or adult social care are required to implement the Standard in full by 31 July 2016. Compliance with the Standard is also a requirement of the NHS Standard Contract 2016/17.

NHS England does not hold information on how many NHS trusts conform to the Standard.

NHS England is not proactively monitoring progress of organisations that provide NHS or adult social care towards conforming to the Accessible Information Standard, as the Standard does not establish a new national audit or dataset which requires organisations to report centrally on their adherence. In addition, NHS England as an organisation does not have a monitoring or inspection remit.

However, the Standard includes requirements for organisations to publish or display an accessible communications policy which explains how they will follow the Accessible Information Standard, and an accessible complaints policy. The inclusion of these requirements is intended to support ease of compliance assessment by interested organisations, and to ensure that people with information and communication support needs are able to provide feedback to organisations about their experiences.

The specification for the Standard also makes clear that commissioning organisations must actively support compliance by organisations from which they commission services and must also seek assurance from providers in this regard.

In addition, the Care Quality Commission will look at evidence of how services implement the Accessible Information Standard as part of their inspection of health services and adult social care services when they make judgements about whether health services are responsive to people’s needs, and adult social care services are responsive to people’s needs and whether they are well led.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2016-07-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in each parliamentary constituency receive attendance allowance.

Penny Mordaunt

Statistical information on Attendance Allowance claimants, including the numbers of cases in payment in each parliamentary constituency, is available from the DWP Tabulation Tool: http://tabulation-tool.dwp.gov.uk/100pc/tabtool.html

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2015-11-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many (a) men and (b) women by (i) age and (ii) incident have been diagnosed with secondary breast cancer in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

Jane Ellison

Public Health England (PHE) is responsible for collecting cancer data to support national cancer registration in England and recognises the importance of collecting data on recurrent breast cancer; however data on the number of people diagnosed with secondary breast cancer is not currently available. Pilot work undertaken in April 2012 in acute trusts has improved the reporting for breast cancer recurrence and metastasis to the National Cancer Registration Service (NCRS). In order to drive up data completeness for the submissions to the NCRS, monthly reports on data quality and completeness of the Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset are made available to all acute providers.

Since the completion of the pilot project the NCRS in PHE has been working with all acute National Health Service providers in England to improve the reporting of breast cancer recurrence. The collection of this particular item of data remains challenging because relapsed patients may represent in many different ways and through many referral routes.

Further work is being scoped by NHS England and PHE based on the recommendation in the recent Independent Cancer Taskforce report to establish robust surveillance systems to collect this data on all cancers.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2016-01-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of personal independence payment recipients the sample of 105 cases represented in his Department’s Consultation on aids and appliances and the daily living component of personal independence payment; what methodology his Department used in its review of those cases; and how that sample was selected.

Justin Tomlinson

As part of the consultation on aids and appliances and the daily living component of PIP, the Department reviewed a sample of 105 cases where claimants scored all, or the majority, of their points from aids and appliances. These were randomly selected.

PIP is designed to provide a contribution to the additional costs faced by those with a long-term impairment or health-condition. Yet in over 90% of the cases reviewed claimants were likely to have only low or minimal additional costs. This was based on the professional opinion of DWP doctors who looked at all the information held on departmental systems relating to each case.

The Department’s latest published statistics show that, as of October 2015, there were 611,121 PIP claimants. 105 cases would represent 0.02% of this figure. However, this includes claimants who receive the mobility component, which is not within scope of the consultation, as well as those who receive the daily living component, the majority of whom did not score all, or most, of their points from aids and appliances.

Given the strength of the pattern that emerged from the review of the 105 cases, we believe that the cases provide an important indication of how the assessment is working and that it was important to include these findings in the consultation document.