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2 Mar 2010 : Column 1024W—continued
Departmental Public Expenditure
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how much of the additional £5 billion announced in (a) pre-Budget report 2008 and (b) the Budget 2009 has been allocated to (i) Jobcentre Plus, (ii) Flexible New Deal, (iii) the Future Jobs Fund, (iv) the Young Persons Guarantee, (v) the six month offer and (vi) other employment-related programmes; [309330]
(2) what estimate she has made of the underspend from planned budgets for the additional £5 billion announced in the (a) pre-Budget report 2008 and (b) Budget 2009 in respect of expenditure on (i) Jobcentre Plus, (ii) Flexible New Deal, (iii) the Future Jobs Fund, (iv) the Young Persons Guarantee, (v) the six month offer and (vi) other employment-related programmes; [309331]
(3) how much her Department has reallocated consequent on the rate of claimant unemployment at the time of Budget 2009; from what budgets that money has been reallocated; and to which budgets it has been transferred; [309332]
(4) how much of the additional £5 billion announced in the (a) pre-Budget report 2008 and (b) Budget 2009 has been spent. [309350]
Jim Knight: In the pre-Budget report 2008, and Budget 2009, the Chancellor announced that additional investment of up to £5 billion discretionary spending would be made available as a response to the recession. The following table shows how this £5 billion was allocated:
| £ million | ||
| pre-Budget report 2008 | Budget 2009 | |
|
Employment Providers and Local Authorities (for the administration of Housing Benefit) | ||
Of the £5 billion additional investment, £2.1 billion is allocated to 2009-10 and £2.9 billion to 2010-11. The precise allocation of this resource within the Department is set out in our three-year business plan, a copy of which is in the House of Commons Library.
The number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance at the end of 2009 was over 450,000 lower than the NAO audited assumption at the time of Budget 2009. If unemployment follows the revised NAO audited assumption set out in the pre-Budget report 2009, benefit expenditure would be around £10 billion lower over the next five years than forecast at Budget 2009. This has also led to savings from the Department's budget and allows us to reprioritise £400 million over the next 18 months to fund the measures set out in "Building Britain's Recovery: Achieving Full Employment".
The Department keeps financial allocations to its programmes under constant review and will publish updated budgets in the revised three-year business plan, which will be published before the end of the current financial year.
Departmental Public Relations
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much her Department spent on (a) communications, (b) marketing, (c) advertising and (d) external public relations in 2009. [317162]
Jonathan Shaw: The DWP communications team has a wide-ranging remit to support the delivery of the Department's objectives. This includes communicating with staff, the public, business and stakeholders on the help and support available throughout the downturn, eligibility for entitlements, pensions, additional help and support as well as encouraging saving for later life. The team works right across the breadth of the Department's responsibilities and includes providing services for Jobcentre Plus and the Pensions, Disability and Carers Service.
Spend information is available for financial years rather than calendar years. Fully audited figures for spend on advertising for 2009-10 are not available at this time. Therefore data supplied is for the 2008-09 financial year.
During 2008-09 financial year a total of £42.283 million was spent by DWP on all communication services. This total covers the spend with external marketing and communication suppliers but does not include internal staff costs and any communications interim personnel. In addition a further £1.735 million was spent on marketing and publicity services through the Department's print and associated services contract with iON during the 2008-09 period. These figures are against overall DWP running costs in 2008-09 of £7.9 billion (0.56 per cent. of overall spend).
Included in this, DWP spent £12.327 million on advertising in this period. All costs are exclusive of VAT, COI fees, advertising rebates and audit adjustments and are for media spend only. They also exclude the cost of creative work, research, production of supporting materials or launch events.
Again, included in the overall figure was a total of £1.2 million was spent by DWP on external public relations during 2008-09.
Departmental Responsibilities
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many of her Department's staff at each grade work in the benefit simplification unit; what targets have been set for the unit; what recent progress reports the unit has published; what recommendations the unit has made since its inception; and how many such recommendations have been implemented. [318794]
Jonathan Shaw [holding answer 25 February 2010]: The benefit simplification unit has three full-time staff (one SEO and two HEOs) with additional input from a senior civil servant (grade 5) and a grade 7.
Their role is to challenge existing complexity across the benefits system, and to ensure that the move towards a simpler, more transparent system is at the heart of future benefit design and delivery.
Progress on simplification is reported on annually in the departmental report, and the effectiveness of the unit is reflected in the extent to which key performance indicators are met across the Department, where these indicators are partly dependent on the complexity of the system.
Simplification measures-both of benefit rules and ease of customer access-introduced since the unit was set up include:
ignoring all final earnings on new claims to benefit (from October 2007). This got rid of a complex and error-prone part of assessing initial benefit entitlement;
the national roll-out of local housing allowance (April 2008), a major shift in the way housing payments are made in the private rented sector which makes them simpler and speedier to administer;
the introduction of employment and support allowance (October 2008), removed confusion resulting from the availability of two benefits for people who are ill or disabled-incapacity benefit, and income support-by replacing them with one simpler benefit for this client group;
paying all working age benefits on a common payday (to be completed by April 2011) instead of confusingly different paydays;
extending the Rapid Reclaim process since the last claim for jobseeker's allowance and income support from 12 to 26 weeks, providing a speedier service, with less form-filling;
transferring all our benefit internet services to Directgov, the main public services website. Customers can now get advice on what to claim on the benefit adviser and track the progress of claims via the secure Benefit Enquiry service.
Departmental Telephone Services
Harry Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what recent estimate she has made of the proportion of benefit and pension claimants calling her Department's telephone inquiry lines from mobile telephones who are not to be charged for the cost of the call; and if she will make a statement. [317378]
Jonathan Shaw: The Department's policy is that all calls to claim the state pension, jobseekers' allowance, employment support allowance as well as to ask for emergency payments or crisis loans, should be free. These 0800 numbers are already free from land lines, which around 70 per cent. of our callers use. The recent agreement with the five biggest UK mobile providers means that calls from their mobile phone networks to these specific 0800 numbers will now be free to their customers as well.
The Department uses 0845 telephone numbers where its customers call for other reasons, and these are calls that typically that take less time to resolve. The charges that apply to these calls will be set by the customer's telephone or mobile operator.
Where a customer calling our 0800 or 0845 services asks us, or raises concerns over the cost of the call, we will offer to call them back.
Employment and Support Allowance
Mr. Hancock: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for what reasons 36 per cent. of employment support allowance cases conducted between October 2008 and February 2009 were closed before their assessment was completed. [318174]
Jonathan Shaw: A detailed breakdown of the information is not available.
There are many reasons why a claim may be closed before the assessment is complete, including people that only need to claim benefit for a short period of time due to a short-term illness or those who claim employment and support allowance completely in error.
As part of the evaluation of employment and support allowance we will be conducting research to examine in more detail those claims that are withdrawn before the assessment is completed.
Mr. Hancock: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when she expects a system for the central holding of information relating to personal capability assessment and claims for incapacity benefit to be introduced. [318175]
Jonathan Shaw: We do not expect to develop a system that would track individuals claiming incapacity benefit through the assessment process. Incapacity benefit was replaced by employment support allowance for new claimants in October 2008 and systems have been put in place for the tracking of people who claim employment support allowance. We do not intend to put systems in place for retrospectively tracking the result of assessment for historical claims.
Employment and Support Allowance: Disabled
Mrs. Moon: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how many and what proportion of applicants for employment and support allowance have been classified as disabled; [318287]
(2) how many and what proportion of applicants for employment and support allowance who have been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease have been classified as disabled; [318288]
(3) how many and what proportion of applicants for employment and support allowance who were previously in receipt of incapacity benefit have been classified as disabled; [318289]
(4) how many and what proportion of applicants for employment and support allowance who have been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and who were previously in receipt of incapacity benefit have been classified as disabled; [318290]
(5) what percentage of applicants for employment and support allowance diagnosed with fibromyalgia have been classified as disabled; [318396]
(6) what percentage of applicants for employment and support allowance diagnosed with fibromyalgia who had previously been in receipt of incapacity benefit have been classified as disabled. [318397]
Jonathan Shaw: The information is not available.
Information on whether a claimant is disabled or not is not recorded for the purposes of employment and support allowance.
Employment Schemes
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what job outcome evidence her Department has collected for (a) the day one offer, (b) the six month offer, (c) support for unemployed professionals and executives and (d) the Flexible New Deal since that scheme was introduced. [309339]
Jim Knight: Information on job outcomes as a direct consequence of the day one offer, which includes support for unemployed professionals and executives, is not available.
The six month offer has a number of elements including the recruitment subsidy, self-employment credit, work-focused training and volunteering. Official statistics were published on 20 January 2010 which showed that between April 2009 and October 2009:
15,530 jobseeker's allowance customers have used the recruitment subsidy;
5,310 jobseeker's allowance customers have taken up the self- employment credit.
The first statistics on work-focused training were published on 17 February 2010. We are investigating the feasibility of reporting work-focused training job outcomes for future publications of six-month offer statistics. We are also looking into how we can calculate job outcomes for the volunteering offer as part of the official statistics publication.
The flexible new deal started on 5 October and official statistics will be available from autumn 2010.
Employment Schemes: Females
Tom Brake: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what steps her Department has taken to help new female claimants of jobseeker's allowance to find long-term employment in the last 12 months. [313526]
Jim Knight: All JSA customers are treated according to their individual circumstances, in keeping with a personalised and professional service and have the same access to the wide range of initiatives to help them return to work.
All departmental policies are subject to an Equality impact assessment and after implementation take up of programmes is monitored, including by gender, for further development of design and delivery.
Employment Schemes: Young People
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) in which (a) Jobcentre Plus districts, (b) local authorities and (c) constituencies Future Jobs Fund jobs are not available to young people as part of the young person's guarantee; [317615]
(2) in which (a) Jobcentre Plus districts, (b) local authorities and (c) constituencies not all of the elements of the young person's guarantee are available; and which such elements are (i) available and (ii) not available in each such area. [317616]
Jim Knight:
In principle the Young Person's Guarantee, including the Future Jobs Fund, is available in all Jobcentre Plus districts, in all local authorities and in all
constituencies, dependent on there being successful bids in these areas. In Scotland and Wales the training element of the young person's guarantee is provided by the devolved Administrations.
Employment: Scotland
Mr. Carmichael: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate her Department has made of the number of people seeking employment in the (a) engineering industry, (b) life sciences sector, (c) renewable energy industry and (d) construction industry in Scotland. [317737]
Jim Knight: The information is not available, in the format requested.
Future Jobs Fund
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many accepted Future Jobs Fund bids were initially rejected. [304388]
Jim Knight: Where bidding organisations fail to meet the Future Jobs Fund assessment criteria they are provided with feedback and offered further support from DWP, Jobcentre Plus and the Government Office network to enable them to improve and submit their bids. As a result of this process, so far, 38 of the initially rejected organisations have subsequently successful.
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many accepted Future Jobs Fund bids are expected to create fewer than 30 jobs. [304391]
Jim Knight: A total of 272 bids to the Future Jobs Fund have been accepted, which will create up to 110,000 Future Jobs Fund jobs.
We encourage partnership bids but would not necessarily rule out bids for fewer than 30 jobs.
So far, 18 of the 272 accepted bids are expected to create fewer than 30 jobs.
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate has been made of the number of jobs each accepted Future Jobs Fund bid will create. [304392]
Jim Knight: To date 255 bids have been successful and the Department for Work and Pensions has agreed to fund around 110,000 jobs.
Margaret Moran: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how many social enterprises have participated in the Future Jobs Fund; [315107]
(2) how many jobs created under the Future Jobs Fund have been in (a) local authorities and (b) third sector organisations. [315105]
Jim Knight: The information is not available in the requested format.
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