Tag: Eilidh Whiteford

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2016-05-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Answer of 28 April 2016 to Question 34944, on Employment and Support Allowance, if he will publish the guidance on all aspects of the Work Capability Assessment including the application of Regulation 35 of the Employment Allowance Regulations 2008.

Priti Patel

The revised version of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) Handbook, which contains written guidance on all aspects of the Work Capability Assessment including the application of Regulation 35, will be published in due course.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans are in place to ensure that a server issue with the universal credit portal does not reoccur.

Damian Hinds

Whenever a service problem is identified the Department always prioritises claimants first ensuring their payments are not interrupted. In this instance the outage impacted only 24 of the 712 Jobcentres across Great Britain and none of the claimants impacted experienced a delay in their payments.

The performance of all systems is continuously monitored on many resilient servers and in the event of an outage an immediate impact assessment is made and appropriate action taken to ensure normal service is resumed at the earliest possible opportunity and the impact on claimants is minimised.

We continually assess the performance of our suppliers, and underlying engineering, to ensure systems are available to meet the needs of claimants and the Department. With the exception of this isolated supplier outage the performance of the UC portal has been higher than expected, however, further improvements to resilience were already under active consideration as part of preparing for UC Full Service national expansion.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2015-11-30.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the reasons for which the jobseeker’s allowance claimant rate is falling faster than the unemployment rate; and what estimate he has made of the proportion of people eligible to claim jobseeker’s allowance in 2013-14 who did not do so.

Priti Patel

It is not appropriate to consider Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) in isolation because the roll out of Universal Credit (UC) means growing numbers now claim UC rather than JSA.

The Office for National Statistics publishes claimant count figures that combine JSA and those claiming UC who are not in work. This does not show the claimant rate falling faster than the unemployment rate. In fact over the past quarter the claimant rate has remained flat while the unemployment rate has fallen 0.3 percentage points.

Estimates of the take-up of income-related benefits in 2013-14 have already been published and are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/437501/ir-benefits-take-up-main-report-2013-14.pdf

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2016-07-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of extending the Shared Accommodation Rate to social rented housing on the ability of single people under the age of 35 to access general needs social rented housing.

Caroline Nokes

Full impact and equality impact assessments will be undertaken in due course.

Single people under 35 will be exempt from the Shared Accommodation Rate if they fall into one of the categories below:

• They have children or a non-dependent living with them;
• They qualify for a severe disability premium;
• If they have left care and are under the age of 22;
• If they have an extra bedroom for a non-resident carer providing overnight care;
• If they are a foster carer;
• They are aged 25 to 34 years old and have spent at least 3 months in a homeless hostel or hostel specialising in rehabilitation and resettlement;
• They are aged 25 to 34 years old who are an ex-offender managed under a multi-agency MAPPA agreement.

For those who are not covered by these exemptions, they will be able to apply for Discretionary Housing Payments if they need help meeting the shortfall in their rent.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if his Department will prepare an impact assessment of any future server outage on the universal credit portal.

Damian Hinds

Whenever a service problem is identified the Department always prioritises claimants first ensuring their payments are not interrupted. In this instance the outage impacted only 24 of the 712 Jobcentres across Great Britain and none of the claimants impacted experienced a delay in their payments.

The performance of all systems is continuously monitored on many resilient servers and in the event of an outage an immediate impact assessment is made and appropriate action taken to ensure normal service is resumed at the earliest possible opportunity and the impact on claimants is minimised.

We continually assess the performance of our suppliers, and underlying engineering, to ensure systems are available to meet the needs of claimants and the Department. With the exception of this isolated supplier outage the performance of the UC portal has been higher than expected, however, further improvements to resilience were already under active consideration as part of preparing for UC Full Service national expansion.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2015-11-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of people in the social housing sector in Scotland will be affected by changes to the levels of housing benefit; and what the cost of such changes will be to the average household in Scotland.

Justin Tomlinson

This policy was introduced because in some areas, increases in social rents have outstripped the increase in private rents.

The policy to cap social sector rents at the relevant Local Housing Allowance rate for the area from April 2018 only applies to a new tenancy or a tenancy that is renewed after April 2016. As such it isn’t possible to accurately estimate the proportion of those in receipt of Housing Benefit in the social sector that will be affected by this policy, as it relies on the choice of those taking out new tenancies.

The Discretionary Housing Payment scheme will be available to Local Authorities to protect the vulnerable.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, entitled Voices of the hungry, published in April 2016, what steps his Department plans to take to (a) initiate regular annual monitoring of adult and child food insecurity in the UK and (b) determine a precise estimate on which to base action to reduce food poverty.

Mr Philip Dunne

Food insecurity is a global problem which the United Nations (UN) agreed to confront at the World Food Summit in 1996 and has framed subsequent sustainable development goals. Getting accurate and informative data was the motivation for the ‘Voices of the Hungry’ project. This project has established an annual universal metric to measure lack of access to food and the severity of this in over 150 countries, and help inform UN policy. The Department for International Development has provided financial support to enable the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to take this forward.

The United Kingdom is committed to the Sustainable Development Goals and to the data the FAO commissions and manages. There are therefore no plans for the Department of Health to independently monitor food insecurity going forward, or determine a precise estimate on which to base action to reduce food poverty.

The Government is committed to tackling childhood obesity and launched Childhood Obesity: A Plan for Action on 18 August. A copy of the plan is attached and is also available at:

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/546588/Childhood_obesity_2016__2__acc.pdf

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the recommendations made by the UK Statistics Agency in August 2015, what plans his Department has to extend the range of benefit sanction data available by addressing gaps in information on repeat sanctions and hardship payments alongside the development of sanction data from the universal credit system.

Damian Hinds

The sanctions publication strategy which details the approach being taken by DWP statisticians to improve the sanctions statistics being developed, which include the addition of Universal Credit sanction statistics, can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/benefit-sanction-statistics-publication-strategy

The latest release of sanction statistics within the Quarterly Statistical Summary: August 2016 includes an experimental monthly rate of claimants sanctioned and can be found (on page12) at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-statistical-summaries-2016

The related background information to support this can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monthly-rate-of-claimants-sanctioned-background-information-and-methodology

Management Information data on the number of applications and awards for hardship payments were published on 18th November 2015 and can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/jsa-and-esa-hardship-applications-and-awards-apr-2012-to-jun-2015

We will consider the regularity of future publications of hardship statistics alongside our routine prioritisation of our statistical work programme.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2015-12-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he plans to publish statistics on sanctions imposed under the universal credit scheme during the course of its implementation.

Priti Patel

The Department published its strategy for releasing official statistics on Universal Credit in September 2013. As outlined in the strategy, officials are quality assuring data for Universal Credit and formulating a definitive list of what statistics will be provided in the future.

These statistics will be published in accordance with the relevant protocols in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, entitled Voices of the hungry, published in April 2016, whether tackling dietary inequality will be a focus of the forthcoming childhood obesity strategy.

Mr Philip Dunne

Food insecurity is a global problem which the United Nations (UN) agreed to confront at the World Food Summit in 1996 and has framed subsequent sustainable development goals. Getting accurate and informative data was the motivation for the ‘Voices of the Hungry’ project. This project has established an annual universal metric to measure lack of access to food and the severity of this in over 150 countries, and help inform UN policy. The Department for International Development has provided financial support to enable the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to take this forward.

The United Kingdom is committed to the Sustainable Development Goals and to the data the FAO commissions and manages. There are therefore no plans for the Department of Health to independently monitor food insecurity going forward, or determine a precise estimate on which to base action to reduce food poverty.

The Government is committed to tackling childhood obesity and launched Childhood Obesity: A Plan for Action on 18 August. A copy of the plan is attached and is also available at:

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/546588/Childhood_obesity_2016__2__acc.pdf