Tag: Eilidh Whiteford

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what account he plans to take of dietary inequality and food insecurity in the planned childhood obesity strategy.

Jane Ellison

Our Childhood Obesity Strategy, which will be launched in the summer, will look at everything that contributes to a child becoming overweight and obese.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average number of days was from the posting of a medical certificate by a claimant in support of an employment and support allowance claim to the day his Department acknowledged receipt of that certificate in the last 12 months.

Penny Mordaunt

The information requested is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Government plans to take to reduce the number of occupation illnesses.

Justin Tomlinson

Tackling ill health is one of six strategic themes in the new strategy for the health and safety system, ‘Helping Great Britain work well’. The strategy is available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/strategy/index.htm

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time taken was to process hardship payments between the day the application was made and the day the claimant received the payment for sanctioned (a) jobseeker’s allowance and (b) employment and support allowance claimants before reviews, reconsiderations or appeals for the period between 1 July and 31 December 2015.

Damian Hinds

The information requested is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people (a) successfully made an application for Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) and (b) were unsuccessful in an application for JSA following a Genuine Prospect of Work assessment in the last two years.

Priti Patel

The Department does not record statistics on applications for Jobseeker’s Allowance following a genuine prospect of work assessment.

To collate the information requested would take the costs of responding to the question over the disproportionate cost threshold.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average and median waiting time is for users calling the universal credit helpline; and how many calls to that helpline were answered in (a) less than five, (b) between five and 10, (c) between 10 and 15, (d) between 15 and 20 and (e) more than thirty minutes between 1 January and 30 June 2016.

Damian Hinds

The data below states the Average Speed of Answer for all UC calls for the period 1 January 2016 – 30 June 2016.

Data source: Operational Management Information System (OPMIS)

It would be a disproportionate cost to compute the median in each month, and the breakdown by waiting time intervals.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what guidelines his Department issues to its staff on carrying out Genuine Prospect of Work assessments.

Priti Patel

Guidance for Department for Work and Pensions staff responsible for carrying out Genuine Prospect of Work tests can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/510008/dmgch0703.pdf

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the value is of the contract between his Department and SCC for providing server support for the universal credit portal.

Damian Hinds

This information can be found on the Contract Finder website – please see the below link.

https://www.gov.uk/contracts-finder

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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.