| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
21 July 2009 : Column 1321W—continued
Pensioners
Mr. Willetts: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will publish an update of the data in figure 6.41 on page 293 of the report of the Turner Commission. A new pension settlement for the 21st century, on public expenditure on pensioner benefits as a percentage of GDP, for the period covered by the figure; and if she will publish the same information in the case of each age cohort. [269821]
Angela Eagle [holding answer 20 April 2009]: Such figures as are available were published in an update to the Pensions Reform Bill Regulatory Impact Assessment in May 2007. They can be found at:
figure 14, p16. More recent figures, and a breakdown by age cohort, are not available, and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Notes:
1. Figures are consistent with DWP long-term projections published at Budget 2007.
2. Post-reform figures are consistent with the pensions reform proposals at the time of publication (May 2007) and not necessarily with the Turner Commission report.
Pensioners: Social Security Benefits
Steve Webb: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will estimate the cost to the Exchequer of assuming that any income earned from savings for the purposes of pensioners' eligibility for (a) pension credit, (b) housing benefit and (c) council tax benefit is one per cent. higher than the Bank of England base rate (i) beyond and (ii) instead of existing capital disregards. [276774]
Angela Eagle: The following table shows the estimated cost of assuming different illustrative Bank of England rates of around 1 per cent. and 5 per cent. (averaged over a year), with and without the £6,000 capital disregard.
| Estimated cost of tariff income set at approximately 1 per cent. higher than Bank of England base rate for pension credit, housing benefit and council tax benefit (2009-10 prices) | ||
| Rate applied to income above the disregard | (i) Cost keeping current disregard (£ million) | (ii) Cost removing current disregard (£ million) |
| Notes: 1. These estimates have been calculated using the Policy Simulation Model (PSM) which uses data from the Family Resources Survey (FRS). Estimates are subject to sampling and modelling uncertainty. 2. Income taken into account is rounded up to the next £1. 3. In column (i) the interest rate is applied to capital above the capital disregard. 4. Estimates do not include the cost of applying the rules to those in care/nursing homes. 5. Costs have been calculated against the current £6,000 threshold and not against the revised threshold of £10,000 that will apply from November 2009. 6. Costs have been rounded to the nearest £10 million. | ||
Pensions Service: Incentives
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much was paid in bonuses to (a) directors, (b) senior managers, (c) specialist and delivery managers and (d) executive support and administration staff in the Pensions Service in each of the last five years. [280620]
Angela Eagle: The information available is in the following table
| Amount paid in bonuses for 2007-08 and 2008-09 | ||
| Bonuses (£) | ||
| The Pension Service( 1) | 2007-08 | 2008-09 |
| (1) The Pension Service ceased to exist from 1 April 2008, when it merged with the Disability and Carers Service to form the Pension, Disability and Carers Service (PDCS). The figures entered for 2008-09 therefore represent bonuses paid to ex-The Pension Service staff who are now working within PDCS and broadly carrying out the same roles as in 2007-08. (2) There is not a directly comparable figure for Directors and Senior Managers in the new organisation, whose roles span the whole new agency. Source: Resource Management (RM) System-Payroll | ||
Pensions: York
Hugh Bayley: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many people in (a) the City of York local authority area and (b) City of York constituency are in receipt of (i) the basic state pension and (ii) pension credit; and what the average weekly value of pension credit received is in each case. [285754]
Angela Eagle: The information requested is in the following table.
| People in receipt of the basic state pension | Households in receipt of pension credit | Average weekly amount of pension credit (£) | |
| Notes: 1. Numbers in receipt of basic state pension rounded to the nearest hundred. 2. The number of households in receipt are rounded to the nearest 10. 3. Household recipients are those people who claim pension credit either for themselves only or on behalf of a household. Source: DWP Information Directorate Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study 100 per cent. data and DWP Information Directorate 5 per cent. sample data. | |||
Pilot Schemes
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what her Department's definition is of (a) a pilot and (b) a pathfinder programme. [286746]
Jim Knight:
The Department has no formal definition for pilots or pathfinders. A pilot is considered to be a feasibility study or activity aimed at testing and evaluating the effectiveness of an initiative on a small scale before considering whether or not to implement it more widely. A pathfinder is an advance part of implementation
when a decision has been made to deploy a project. Pathfinders are generally the initial phase in rolling out initiatives.
Poverty: Essex
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many people in (a) Essex and (b) Castle Point constituency were in relative poverty in each of the last five years. [273373]
Angela Eagle: Poverty statistics, published in the Households Below Average Income series, only allow a breakdown of the overall number of people in relative poverty at Government office region level or for inner or outer London. This means information for Essex and the Castle Point constituency is not available.
Poverty: Parents
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what her most recent assessment is of levels of poverty among working parents who are not eligible for tax credits. [282865]
Mr. Timms: I have been asked to reply.
The child tax credit is a single, inclusive system of support for all families with children with an income up to £58,000. Families with a child aged under 16, or a young person aged 16-19 and in qualifying work, education or training, are eligible. Around nine out of 10 families with children are entitled to the child tax credit, there is little or no risk of poverty for families with incomes above the income threshold.
Recruitment: Discrimination
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what criteria applied in the selection of employers by her Department in respect of its recent study into discrimination in recruitment practices. [287770]
Jim Knight: Applications were made to advertised job vacancies. No specific employers or sectors of industry were targeted. Full details of the methodology of the research will be published in the autumn.
Remploy: South Yorkshire
Mr. Betts: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate she has made of the number of people who left the employment of Remploy in South Yorkshire in the last (a) 12 months and (b) five years who are in permanent employment. [288833]
Jim Knight: The number of people who left the employment of Remploy in South Yorkshire in the last 12 months is 31. In the last five years, 139 people left the employment of Remploy in South Yorkshire.
Remploy has confirmed that it does not collate destination information for former employees, therefore, we are unable to provide information on how many are in permanent employment.
Self-Employed: Government Assistance
Mr. Clappison: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how the self employment support available under the six month offer will differ from that offered under the New Deal for Self Employment; [288004]
(2) what estimate she has made of the number of people she expects to support into self-employment under the six month offer in (a) 2009-10, (b) 2010-11 and (c) 2011-12; [288005]
(3) whether a last trading period will be available to a person receiving self-employment support as part of the six month offer; [288006]
(4) how much funding has been assigned to the self-employment support to be made available under the six month offer in (a) 2009-10, (b) 2010-11 and (c) 2011-12. [288007]
Jim Knight: The self-employment element of the six month offer was introduced on 6 April 2009 and provides substantial advice and support to enable people to move into self-employment or to start their own business. There is an active programme of intensive support delivered by Business Link in England by Flexible Support for Business in Wales and by Business Gateway and Training for Work in Scotland. Those moving into self-employment will be entitled to a self-employment credit made up of 16 weekly payments of £50 to help with the transition into work and to underpin finances for the first few months of the business.
There is no new deal for the self-employed although both the new deal for young people and the new deal 25-plus include options offering self-employment support. Under flexible new deal providers will also be able to provide self employment support. The new deal and six month offer routes into self employment are broadly similar. Both offer intensive support and advice to those who need it. To ease the transition into sustainable self-employment the new deals give customers an opportunity to undertake a period of test-trading for up to 26 weeks. Test trading enables the customer to begin work while remaining on benefits, whereas under the six month offer the self-employment credit is payable.
We have anticipated the six month offer providing 500,000 opportunities for jobseekers and have made an investment in the offer of £0.5 billion. On current estimates we expect to be able to provide self employment support to 135,000 people.
The offers are voluntary and are therefore demand led. The overall package is designed to be flexible and respond to customer needs. It is also possible that for any individual customer, a mix of offers may be appropriate.
Social Fund
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what progress her Department has made in its review of the Social Fund since the publication in November 2008 of its consultation document, The Social Fund: a new approach. [281574]
Helen Goodman:
The Government's response to the consultation document 'The Social Fund: A New Approach-Response Document' was published on the
Department for Work and Pensions' website in February 2009. A copy has been placed in the Library. It can be downloaded from:
We anticipate that a further consultation document focused on the longer-term reform of the Social Fund will be published later this year.
Social Security Benefits
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how many and what proportion of claims for (a) budgeting loans, (b) crisis loans, (c) community care grants, (d) jobseeker's allowance, (e) incapacity benefit/employment and support allowance, (f) income support and (g) pension credit were processed within the target actual average clearance time in the last (i) 12 months and (ii) five years for which information is available; [266180]
(2) what the average clearance time for claims for (a) budgeting loans, (b) crisis loans, (c) community care grants, (d) jobseeker's allowance, (e) incapacity benefit/employment and support allowance, (f) income support and (g) pension credit was in cases where the claim was longer than the average clearance time in each of the last (i) 12 months and (ii) five years. [266181]
Jim Knight:
The Jobcentre Plus target for processing jobseeker's allowance, income support and incapacity benefit claims is an average actual clearance time. Not all cases will be processed within the target for that benefit for a variety of reasons, but a calculation based
on the average time taken across all claims processed within any given month is used as a measure of overall performance. As a result the Department's computer systems do not gather data in the way they have been requested.
The average actual clearance time information for budgeting loan, crisis loan and community care grant applications that are processed outside of the standard is not available.
Detailed information on clearance times for receipt of employment and support allowance is not available at the present time.
Employment and support allowance replaced incapacity benefit for new claims from 27 October 2008. The latest quarterly data available are November 2008. More comprehensive figures are expected to be available when the February 2009 publication is produced in August 2009.
The available information has been placed in the Library.
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what start and end point is used to measure average actual clearance times for benefit claims. [286745]
Jim Knight: The Department for Work and Pensions administers a wide range of benefits. The clearance performance for some of these is measured in Average Actual Clearance Times (AACT). AACTs are calculated by dividing the total number of working days taken to clear cases by the total number of cases cleared. Details of the start and end point for each such benefit are given in the following table.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |