Tag: Eilidh Whiteford

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.

“

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

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the effect on claimants of the (a) seven waiting days at the beginning of a universal credit claim and (b) six week period a claimant must wait before receiving their initial payment.

Damian Hinds

Many claimants come to Universal Credit with final earnings to support them until their first payment, and they often find work quickly.

The Universal Credit assessment period and payment structure is a fundamental part of the design; it mirrors the world of work, where 75% of people are paid monthly.

As with other working age benefits, Universal Credit is not designed to provide cover for brief spells of unemployment or sickness, and seven waiting days are served in Universal Credit as they are in Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance.

We have a number of safeguards in place to help claimants’ transition to Universal Credit, including Advances and Budgeting Support.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of (a) jobseeker’s allowance and (b) employment and support allowance claims were subject to a sanction (i) pre-challenge and (ii) post-challenge in 2013-14.

Priti Patel

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

The latest Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance sanctions statistics can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/jobseekers-allowance-sanctions

“

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

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department plans to take to (a) track and (b) report progress made against the Sustainable Development Goals by applying the Food Insecurity Experience Scale.

James Wharton

DFID helped to establish the use of the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. This is the method the UN’s Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators has recommended for tracking and reporting on the prevalence of food insecurity for Global Goal 2.

DFID is in the process of reviewing its results framework and is also considering ways to apply the Food Insecurity Experience Scale in relevant programmes. For example, this year DFID supported the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme to agree a new Monitoring and Evaluation framework which will use the Food Insecurity Experience Scale to track progress on food security for households supported by the programme.