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29 Oct 2007 : Column 743W—continued
I hope you find this answer helpful.
Danny Alexander: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the cost of raising the child support maintenance disregard for parents on benefits to (a) £20 per week from October 2008 and (b) £40 per week from April 2010. [161202]
Mr. Plaskitt: We estimate that the cost of increasing the child maintenance disregard to £20 per week by the end of 2008 will be £40 million in 2008-09 and £80 million in 2009-10. Further increasing the child maintenance disregard to £40 per week from April 2010 will cost £140 million in 2010-11. These costs include a full disregard in housing benefit and council tax benefit.
Danny Alexander: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the savings to be made from child maintenance reform and elsewhere in his Department in order to pay for the higher child support maintenance disregard for parents on benefits, as mentioned in the pre-Budget report and comprehensive spending review. [161203]
Mr. Plaskitt:
The Department's CSR 07 Settlement requires it to reduce its expenditure by 5 per cent. per annum in real terms. A value for money delivery agreement setting out how those savings will be realised will be published in December. The cost of meeting the
higher child maintenance disregard from 2010-11 has been factored into the planning that will inform that value for money agreement.
Danny Alexander: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how the specified budget for the proposed child support advice and information services will be affected by his Department's decrease in its budget by 5 per cent. per year on average in real terms. [161205]
Mr. Plaskitt: The resources planned for the proposed child maintenance information and support services will be fully provided for from within the funding available to the Department across the CSR 07 period.
Danny Alexander: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families on child support reform. [161206]
Mr. Plaskitt: Ministers from the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Children, Schools and Families meet regularly on a range of issues of common interest—including child maintenance reform.
Danny Alexander: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the number of non-resident parents with a present child support liability who, as a result of transfer of their case to the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission from 2010 onwards, will see their weekly liability alter by (a) between £0 to £10, (b) between £10 to £20, (c) between £20 to £30 and (d) by more than £30 as a result of the difference between their current assessment and the new calculation based on historic tax year information. [161428]
Mr. Plaskitt: The information requested is not available.
With the increased focus on voluntary arrangements and the ending of the requirement that parents with care on benefit be treated as applying for child maintenance, not all of the current Child Support Agency caseload will choose to use the statutory maintenance service. Since we do not know the precise composition of the resulting caseload, it is not possible to estimate the impact on those existing cases of moving to the Commission.
Figures on the amounts paid under the second child support scheme and statutory maintenance arrangements under different income levels and for different family sizes can be found in table 2, page 19 of the Regulatory Impact Assessment which accompanied the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill.
Danny Alexander: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many child support cases of (a) up to one year, (b) one to two years, (c) two to three years, (d) three to four years, (e) four to five years and (f) five or more years of age have never been reassessed since originally calculated. [161429]
Mr. Plaskitt: The administration of the Child Support Agency is the matter for the Chief Executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.
Letter from Duncan Gilchrist, dated 29 October 2007:
In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many child support cases of (a) up to one year (b) one to two years (c) two to three years (d) three to four years (e) four to five years and (f) five or more years of age have never been reassessed since originally calculated.
The Management Information is only available from the CS2 computer system. The requested information is provided in the attached table.
I hope you find this answer helpful.
| Number of cases on CS2 by age and assessment status: September 2007 | |
| Age of case | Cases not reassessed |
| Notes: 1. Includes all open cases with an assessment on CS2 at September 2007. 2. Volumes rounded to the nearest 100. | |
Children: Poverty
Jenny Willott: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) what his Department's latest estimate is of the number of children in (a) the UK, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland and (d) England living below the poverty line; and if he will make a statement; [161803]
(2) how many and what proportion of children in (a) the UK, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland and (d) England were living below the poverty line in each of the last 10 years; and if he will make a statement; [161804]
(3) what his Department's latest estimate is of the number of households in (a) the UK, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland and (d) England living below the poverty line; and if he will make a statement; [161805]
(4) how many and what proportion of households in (a) the UK, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland and (d) England were living below the poverty line in each of the last 10 years; and if he will make a statement; [161806]
(5) what his Department's latest estimate is of the number of disabled children in (a) the UK, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland and (d) England living below the poverty line; and if he will make a statement; [161808]
(6) how many and what proportion of disabled children in (a) the UK, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland and (d) England were living below the poverty line in each of the last 10 years; and if he will make a statement; [161811]
(7) what his Department's latest estimate is of the number of lone parents in (a) the UK, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland and (d) England living below the poverty line; and if he will make a statement; [161812]
(8) how many and what proportion of lone parents in (a) the UK, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland and (d) England were living below the poverty line in each of the last 10 years; and if he will make a statement. [161815]
Caroline Flint: The information requested has been placed in the Library.
Council Tax Benefits: Pensioners
Mr. Andrew Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement on the campaign his Department is running to promote the take-up of council tax benefit by pensioners; and what assessment he has made of the impact of this campaign so far. [158054]
Mr. Plaskitt [holding answer 17 October 2007]: The three page claim form that has been introduced means less bureaucracy and better service for pension credit customers. One phone call can give customers access to four benefits—pension credit, state retirement pension, council tax benefit (CTB) and housing benefit (HB). This form is completed for the customer. All they need to do is check it, sign it and send it back.
We are taking other measures to promote the take up of CTB. There are annual awareness campaigns. We have provided local authorities with best practice guidance that contains information about barriers to claiming, ways of overcoming them, and case study examples of good practice to improve take-up. We have supported the three page form arrangements with computer scans run by the Pension Service to discover people getting pension credit but not CTB and this information is passed to local authorities. We encourage local authorities to do take-up activity through our performance standards and have awarded £2.2 million to 38 authorities to increase CTB take-up.
In the longer term, we want to deliver CTB as accessibly, simply and securely as possible. We want to research the feasibility of using data held “across Government” to build profiles of people likely to be entitled. We also want to develop the concept of a “single point of contact” for pensioners, coupled with alignment of application processes that will provide greater efficiency and a better public service.
Our assessment shows that enabling people to access CTB and HB via the Pension Service has resulted so far in over 65,000 more people being paid those benefits.
Crimes of Violence: Public Sector
Mr. Frank Field: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many assaults on local government public sector workers there were in each year since 1992, broken down by local authority. [158218]
Mrs. McGuire [holding answer 15 October 2007]: A table of the available data on assaults to local government employees, broken down by local authority, between 1996-97 and 2002-03 has been placed in the Library as requested.
Changes to the data collection system in 2002-03 mean that HSE cannot provide figures after that date for local authorities as opposed to figures for public sector workers generally.
Departments: Assets
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what departmental assets are planned to be sold in each financial year from 2007-08 to 2010-11; what the (a) description and (b) book value of each such asset is; and what the expected revenue from each such sale is. [160404]
Mrs. McGuire: DWP disposed of its vehicle fleet during 2007-08 and entered into a contract for vehicle services. The Department received revenue from this disposal equal to the net book value of approximately £10.5 million. This was the last of DWP’s major assets to be disposed of as it moves from asset ownership to contracting for services. There are no material disposals planned for 2008-09 to 2010-11.
Departments: Contracts
John McDonnell: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much of the Department’s expenditure and what percentage is directed towards contracted provision. [154314]
Mrs. McGuire [holding answer 8 October 2007]: In the 2006-07 financial year the Department for Work and Pension’s total expenditure (including VAT) on contracted provision was £4,270 million. This represents 3.36 per cent. of the Department’s total budget. In line with Treasury guidance the total budget figure used in this calculation comprises both the Department’s departmental expenditure limit and annually managed expenditure. It should be noted that the Department’s annually managed expenditure largely covers the cost of benefit payments.
Departments: Correspondence
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what guidance his Department follows on the maximum time taken to respond to hon. Members’ correspondence; and what performance against that target was in the most recent period for which figures are available. [158581]
Mr. Plaskitt: I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office (Edward Miliband) on 22 October 2007, Official Report, column 45W.
Departments: Cost Effectiveness
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will place in the Library a breakdown of his Department's efficiency savings in relation to its Spending Review 2004 (SR04) targets, including (a) the efficiency projects in the Department, (b) the date on which they were initiated and (c) how much each was predicted to contribute to the SR04 target. [160539]
Mrs. McGuire:
The Department's Spending Review 2004 Efficiency Technical Note was published in December 2005. This set out the SR2004 efficiency targets and how these would be measured. A copy of
the DWP Efficiency Technical Note can be found on our website at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/aboutus/efficiency_tech_note.pdf
Progress on delivery of the efficiency targets is reported six monthly in the Departmental Report and the Autumn Performance Report. The Departmental Report for 2007 [Cm7105], published in May, is the latest publication. This can be found on our website at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp/2007/dr07/
Updated figures will be available in the Autumn Performance Report when it is published at the end of November.
DWP is on track to achieve all of its SR2004 efficiency targets.
The major efficiency projects, grouped by business, the date they were initiated and the amount they were predicted to contribute to the SR2004 target in the first return made to OGC (Office of Government Commerce) is in the following table.
| Project | Date initiated | Contribution to SR2004 Efficiency Programme( 1) (£ million) |
| (1 )As forecast in the first return to OGC. | ||
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