Tag: Eilidh Whiteford

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

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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.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will provide details of the contracts that his Department has with the technology company SCC.

Caroline Nokes

The Department does not hold any direct contracts with the technology company SCC. It has however tendered services from SCC via the Crown Commercial Service.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Eilidh Whiteford on 2015-12-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if his Department will automatically exempt people (a) who are homeless, (b) with mental ill health and (c) in other at-risk groups from benefit sanctions.

Priti Patel

The sanctions process encourages benefit claimants to do everything they can to find work. Evidence shows that they have a positive impact on behaviour – over 70% JSA & over 60% ESA claimants say that sanctions make it more likely they will follow the rules.

Jobseekers are only asked to meet reasonable requirements, taking into account their circumstances and capability, including mental health conditions, disability housing status and caring responsibilities. These requirements are clearly explained and agreed by jobseekers with their Work Coach and set out in their Claimant Commitment.

As we already have a number of flexibilities in place, we will not be automatically exempting people who are homeless, who have mental health issues, or other vulnerable groups from benefit sanctions.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when his Department plans to publish data on the number of (a) low, (b) medium and (c) high level sanctions applied to universal credit claimants (i) before and (ii) after challenges.

Damian Hinds

The Department updated its strategy for releasing official statistics on Universal Credit (UC) in February 2016. As outlined in the strategy, officials are currently assessing the data for UC and will only release information once the necessary quality assurance work has taken place. These statistics will be published in accordance with the relevant protocols in the Code of Practice for official statistics.

Universal Credit official statistics and the Departments release strategy can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/universal-credit-statistics

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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 estimate he has made of the number of people who were affected by the recent server issue affecting the universal credit portal; and if he will make a statement.

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 2015-12-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of people sanctioned since 2012 have not gained employment and are no longer in receipt of the relevant benefit following the sanction period.

Priti Patel

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

The information that is available, on the number of sanction referrals and adverse sanction decisions, in respect of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), is published and available at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/:

Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:

https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started—SuperWEB2.html

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