Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
13 July 2009 : Column 75Wcontinued
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many bids her Department has received from organisations as part of the Right to Bid initiative; and from which organisation, and in relation to which services or functions provided by her Department, they have been received. [285803]
Jim Knight: Right to Bid commenced on 1 January 2009 and to date (8 July 2009), 92 bids from 85 different organisations have been received. Of these, 42 are private sector organisations, 41 from the third sector, one from the public sector and one is a consortium of private, third, and public sector organisations. The bids remain 'commercial in confidence' and the detail cannot be divulged without the permission of the organisations. The majority of the bids received have been in the Welfare to Work arena. A small number have replicated Learning and Skills Council or Department for Business, Innovation and Skills services.
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many full-time equivalent officials in her Department are working on the Right to Bid team. [285804]
Jim Knight: The Right to Bid scheme is administered and managed by a team of three dedicated full time equivalent officials. The central team is supported by other officials from a number of expert domains throughout the Department as part of the detailed evaluation process.
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what her Department's definition is of a gateway overstayer; and what targets her Department has set to reduce the number of such overstayers. [283591]
Jim Knight: A gateway overstayer is defined as someone who has gone beyond the maximum period (16 weeks) on a New Deal personal adviser caseload and has not started a mandatory Option/Intensive Activity Period. In July 2006, the Jobcentre Plus Chief Operating Officer made a commitment to ensure the number of overstayers was no more than 7 per cent. of the total number of participants within the gateway. The level of overstayers at the end of 2008-09 was 3.8 per cent. of caseload.
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what mechanism her Department has put in place for the independent monitoring of prime providers in the delivery of the Specialist Disability Employment Programme. [286584]
Jonathan Shaw: The quality of provision is subject to external scrutiny by Ofsted in England and Estyn in Wales. From January 2010 Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education will begin to inspect our provision in Scotland.
Once the Specialist Disability Employment Programme has been fully developed the three inspectorates will be commissioned to develop an inspection model to suit this piece of provision. Reports from these inspections will be in the public domain.
This Department will work closely with the external inspectorates to produce an annual programme of inspection, ensuring all prime providers' contracts are inspected over the course of an inspection cycle.
Providers who are found to be unsatisfactory at external inspection will be offered improvement support, through the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, leading up to re-inspection.
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) what criteria will apply in monitoring the effectiveness of the Specialist Disability Employment Programme in respect of each impairment type; [286585]
(2) what support her Department will make available to customers on the Specialist Disability Employment Programme following their completion of the first nine months of the programme. [286587]
Jonathan Shaw: No final decisions have been made as to exactly what information will be collected for the new Specialist Disability Employment Programme. We are currently considering what level of detail it is desirable and practical to collect on customers' impairment types.
In addition, independent evaluation will be an important element of the new programme. It will seek to investigate the extent to which the programme meets its objectives and critical success factors.
The first element of the new programme is called Work Entry Support. Its aim is to offer a range of services and support to help disabled customers with the highest support needs enter paid employment, whether it be unsupported in the open market place or supported employment. With support from the provider, we expect that the majority of customers will be able to do this within nine months of starting on the programme. If they have not been successful in finding suitable employment at this point, then the provider will work with and agree with the customer a detailed action plan, which will offer advice on how they should move forward to help them either move into employment in the future or possibly return to the programme at a later date, which ever is most appropriate to their individual needs.
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many people over the age of 100 receive a state pension. [272471]
Angela Eagle: At November 2008, there were 422,250 state pension recipients aged 90(1) and over.
(1 )Figures given are for state pension recipients aged over 90, rather than for those aged over 100. This is because the available data on ages at the extreme higher end of the distribution is not thought to be sufficiently robust to provide accurate figures for more detailed breakdowns.
Note:
Definitions and conventions
Caseload figures are rounded to the nearest ten. Some additional disclosure control has also been applied. Totals may not sum due to rounding.
Source:
DWP Information Directorate: Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study.
Mr. Hurd: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what terms and conditions are set by her Department in relation to the provision of funding from her Department's budget to (a) charities, (b) voluntary organisations and (c) social enterprises. [284209]
Jim Knight: The Department for Work and Pensions works on a commercial, contractual basis with charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises where such an organisation is in a position to provide a specialist ongoing service which clearly assists in the delivery of the Department's core objectives. The Department uses its standard terms and conditions for goods or services. The Commercial Employment Provision (CEP) standard terms and schedules are used when dealing with welfare to work contracts.
These terms and conditions are based on model terms and conditions recommended by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). They can be viewed online in the supplier section of the Department's website at:
Mr. Rooney: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many jobs have been advertised in each Jobcentre Plus district in each of the last 12 months. [282979]
Jim Knight [holding answer 29 June 2009]: The information has been placed in the Library. The data are broken down by notified vacancies and live unfilled vacancies.
Steve Webb: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions which colleges in each region offer training for jobseekers commissioned by Jobcentre Plus; and how many people claiming jobseeker's allowance have taken part in a training programme offered by a college in each of the last 12 months. [272658]
Jim Knight: The information is not centrally collated and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to the answer of 15 June 2009, Official Report, column 51W, on welfare-to-work: standards, if she will place in the Library a copy of the most recent monthly report summarising the performance of all welfare-to-work providers against agreed targets. [285140]
Jim Knight: A copy of the most recent report, which includes the cumulative performance of contracted provision up to the end of March 2009, has been placed in the Library as requested. This is the end-of-year report for 2008-09.
The DWP continues to develop plans to make this information available on a monthly basis from later in 2009 via the DWP website.
Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate she has made of the number of people in receipt of winter fuel payment who were (a) eligible for and (b) receiving pension credit in each of the last five years. [285845]
Angela Eagle: The information is as follows:
(a) The requested information is not available.
(b) Winter fuel payments are made to pension credit claimants, not individual beneficiaries. Information on payments made to pension credit claimants is contained in the following table:
Number of people in receipt of winter fuel payments | |
Note: Rounded to the nearest 10,000. Source: Winter Fuel Payment datasets, 2007-08 is the latest available data. |
Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will estimate the annual saving to the Exchequer if winter fuel payments were made only to those eligible for pension credit. [285847]
Angela Eagle: Estimates show that if winter fuel payments were only made to recipients of pension credit next financial year that the annually managed expenditure savings could be around £1.5 billion.
Note:
The estimate assumes that all pension credit claimants receive a full winter fuel payment and that both partners are eligible for the same level of payment. Estimates are made on the basis of forecast recipients and not eligibility for pension credit.
Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many (a) households and (b) individuals received the winter fuel payment in each of the last five years. [286028]
Angela Eagle: The number of winter fuel payments paid to households and individuals in Great Britain are as follows:
Households | Individuals | |
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will extend eligibility for the winter fuel allowance to young people with disabilities. [285842]
Helen Goodman: Winter fuel payments are paid to people aged 60 and over to help mitigate the effects of cold weather during the winter months. There are no plans to alter the eligibility criteria for winter fuel payments.
Dr. Kumar: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he plans to review entitlement to child tax credit to families with a gross income of over £80,000. [285224]
Mr. Timms: Tax credits are a carefully targeted system of financial support that provides the greatest help to the least well off families. Support is assessed on the basis of household circumstances, taking into account factors such as the number of children in the household and any disabilities, and only in very exceptional cases will families with very high incomes receive any support. No families with an income over £80,000 a year are currently receiving tax credits, and the majority of families in receipt have incomes below £20,000 a year.
Hugh Bayley: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many children in (a) Yorkshire and the Humber and (b) York had received Child Trust Fund payments on the latest date for which figures are available. [285698]
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The most recent constituency level statistics on child trust fund accounts were published on 6 November 2008 and can be viewed on the HM Revenue and Customs website at:
There were 261,000 children born before 6 April 2007 in Yorkshire and the Humber who have a child trust fund account.
Mr. Mullin: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what his estimate is of the net revenue received in empty property rates in 2008-09; and if he will make a statement. [285568]
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: CLG publish the cost of reliefs, but Central Government do not collect data on the split between business rates paid on empty and occupied property.
The data on the amount of empty property relief that local authorities estimated that they will grant is available in table 2 of the Statistics Release National non-domestic rates to be collected by local authorities in England 2009-10 and is available on the Communities and Local Government website at:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/local regional/localgovernmentfinance/statistics/nondomesticrates/forecast/
Next Section | Index | Home Page |