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18 Sept 2003 : Column 904W—continued
Deprived Areas
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will list the support his Department gives to (a) areas suffering from high levels of unemployment and (b) areas suffering from low average wages. [129158]
Mr. Browne: The level of employment has reached record levels, up by over 1.5 million since 1997. The underlying trend remains upwards and recent unemployment figures are the best since the 1970s. The improvement in the labour market has been spread right across the country, and since 1997, unemployment rates have fallen fastest in the areas with the highest unemployment.
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Jobcentre Plus provides everyone of working age with advice and guidance on the full range of support available to help them move into work, including programmes such as our New Deals. In areas of the country with higher levels of worklessness and concentrations of people who are disadvantaged in the labour market, we have introduced specialist programmes such as Action Teams for Jobs and Employment Zones. By the end of July 2003, they had been successful in helping more than 116,000 people into work. The Government have also introduced measures to help make work pay such as the national minimum wage and tax credits.
From April 2004, we are also introducing a programme of intensive support in neighbourhoods with very high concentrations of worklessness. Local worklessness pilots will operate in 12 of the most deprived neighbourhoods and will run for two years. The pilots will test a new approach to offering intensive support to local residents to help them overcome barriers to employment.
Disability Living Allowance
Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many fraudulent cases have been discovered by the Disability Living Allowance Periodic Enquiry process since June 1999; and if he will make a statement. [127127]
Mr. Pond: Periodic Enquiry was not designed as a fraud prevention measure. The information requested is not available.
Mr. Wyatt: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions whether he intends to extend the threshold for disability living allowance to people of pensionable age and over. [130725]
Maria Eagle: There are no plans to change the rules governing the upper age limit for claims to disability living allowance.
Employer Documentation
Brian Cotter: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will list the documentation issued by his Department that an employer must complete when he or she takes on his or her first employee, in order to be fully compliant; and if he will make a statement. [128688]
Mr. Browne: I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for Employment Relations, Competition and Consumers on 11 September 2003, Official Report, column 388W.
Employers' Liability Insurance
Mrs. Roe: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what information his Department has collated on the number of small and middle-sized enterprises which have stopped trading in the past 12 months as a result of increases in employers' compulsory liability insurance premiums. [130901]
Mr. Browne: While we have received representations about businesses being forced to close as a direct result of increases in their employers' liability insurance
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premiums, conclusive or comprehensive evidence has proved very difficult to obtain. A particular obstacle is the difficulty of disaggregating premium increases as a cause from other factors. For vulnerable companies with low profit margins or debt problems, premium costs might well have been another contributory factor to business failure, but no definitive figures exist.
Forestry
Mr. Edwards: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what representations he has received from representatives of (a) the Forestry Commission and (b) private operators in the forestry industry about the level of employers' compulsory liability insurance premiums. [130425]
Mr. Browne [holding answer 17 September 2003]: The Department has received representations about the level of employers' liability compulsory insurance premiums from:
- the Aboricultural Association;
the United Kingdom Forest Products Association; and
a private operator in the forestry industry.
The representations will inform the second stage of the review of employers' liability compulsory insurance, which is due to report in autumn.
Holidays (Benefit Recipients)
Mr. Drew: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what plans he has to make it easier for those drawing benefit to take a holiday; and what research his Department has undertaken into the number of families that do not take holidays because of poverty. [130575]
Mr. Pond: We have taken action to raise the incomes of families, especially for those on the lowest incomes. To help children out of poverty, we have provided more support than ever before to enable parents to work, and to ensure that they are better off in work. As a result of our personal tax and benefit reforms since 1997, from April 2003, families with children are, on average, £1,200 a year better off, while those in the poorest fifth of the population are, on average, £2,500 a year better off in real terms.
There are different rules and regulations for each of the various benefits, for example, relating to the length of the holiday and whether the holiday is taken within the UK or abroad. Some information is provided in leaflet GL29 "Going abroad and social security benefits", a copy of which is available in the Library.
The Family and Children Study provides research into this specific area. Further details can be found in Vegeris S. & Perry J., Family and Children 2001: Living Standards and the Children, DWP Research Report 190, available in the House of Commons Library. In addition, my Department recently published Farrell C. & O'Connor W., 2003, Low Income families and household spending, DWP Research Report 192, also available in the House of Commons Library, that includes some analysis of the affordability of holidays for people in receipt of benefit.
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Income Support
Mr. Gardiner: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many complaints the Benefits Agency has received about the application process for income support benefits available for home improvement. [129873]
Mr. Pond: Representations are dealt with by Jobcentre Plus and The Pensions Service on an individual basis with regard to the circumstance of each case. It is not possible to identify how many are specifically about the application process for income support benefits for home improvement.
Mr. Gardiner: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) what steps he is taking to improve the response time to applications for income support contributions for home improvements. [129875]
- (2) what targets have been set for the processing of MI12 forms in the Benefits Agency; and what penalties there are if the Agency does not meet these. [129876]
Mr. Pond: We have not set specific, separate targets for the clearance of MI12 forms. As form MI12 is actioned after the initial claim to benefit has been processed it is treated as a change of circumstance. As part of the Key Management Indicators for Jobseeker's Allowance and Income Support clearance targets for changes of circumstances are currently set at four days.
Iron Mountain
Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what criteria led him to award a contract for the management and storage of departmental records to Iron Mountain; and if he will make a statement. [127185]
Mr. Browne: The Department for Work and Pensions has not awarded a contract for the management and storage of departmental records to Iron Mountain. DWP has a contract with Hays IMS for the storage and retrieval of some departmental records. Iron Mountain acquired Hays IMS in August 2003 and the DWP contract with Hays IMS is being novated to Iron Mountain accordingly.
Learning Disability
Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many adults with a learning disability were (a) in paid employment in England and (b) known to social services in England in each year since 1997; what percentage of adults with a learning disability known to social services were in paid employment; and if he will make a statement. [127124]
Maria Eagle: The available information is in the tables.
The Department of Health collects limited information from individual councils with Social Services Responsibilities (CSSR) on the number of their clients with learning disabilities who are in paid employment. This is based on those known to the CSSR as part of a care package following a community care assessment. It is not possible to use this data to produce
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a robust estimate for the whole of England of the percentage of adults with a learning disability known to social services who were in paid employment.
| Year | Number |
|---|---|
| 1998 | 30,000 |
| 1999 | 40,000 |
| 2000 | 40,000 |
| 2001 | 30,000 |
| 2002 | 50,000 |
| 2003 | 60,000 |
Notes:
1. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10,000 and are subject to sampling error.
2. "People with a learning disability" are all persons in employment and all other men aged 16–64 and women aged 16–59 who said that health or disability problems limit the kind of paid work they can do whose main health problem was a severe or specific learning problem.
3. Paid Employment includes employees and self-employed who were paid for at least one hours work in the survey reference week for people of working age (16-years-old to state pension age). It does not include those on Government employment and training programmes as not all people on these schemes are paid.
Source:
Labour Force Survey, Spring Datasets.
| 2000–01 | 2001–02 | |
|---|---|---|
| All ages | 110,000 | 115,000 |
| 18–64 | 101,000 | 101,000 |
| 65+ | 8,000 | 14,000 |
Notes:
1. The data are England estimates grossed up to the nearest thousand to allow for missing data and refer to the reporting year 1 April to 31 March.
2. Adults in this context are people aged 18 and over.
3. The "All ages" totals for 2000–2001 include the number of clients whose age was not known.
4. Figures may not add up because of rounding.
Source:
Department of Health, Referrals, Assessments and Packages of Care (RAP) returns for 2000–01 and 2001–02.
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