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9 Mar 2010 : Column 231W—continued
Staff are also allowed paid leave to serve in a voluntary organisation that provides a service to the local community, such as the Lifeboat Service, Mountain Rescue and Special Constabulary.
The DWP support individuals who wish to participate in the Princes Trust as part of their personal development. They are continually looking at how such programmes and other opportunities e.g. secondments to the voluntary sector etc. can be used as an alternative to traditional learning and development methods.
Employment and Support Allowance
Danny Alexander: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how long on average her Department took to process a claim for employment and support allowance in (a) Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey constituency, (b) the Highlands, (c) Scotland and (d) England and Wales in each of the last 12 months. [320125]
Jonathan Shaw: The information is not available.
Jobcentre Plus is introducing a target for employment and support allowance clearance times from April 2010 and official statistics which will be used to monitor progress will be published in May.
Evaluation of Access to Work
Roger Berry: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions whether she plans to take forward the recommendations made in her Department's research report no. 621, Evaluation of Access to Work: Ministerial Government Departments. [310270]
Jonathan Shaw:
The research report contained a number of recommendations to improve the delivery of support previously financed by Access to Work within ministerial Government Departments. Many of the problems identified, and recommendations suggested, were concerned
specifically with the individual provision arrangements within Government Departments and are therefore for the individual departments to implement. These include improving the monitoring and review processes operated, potentially in line with those delivered by Access to Work.
The report does however identify support that the Department for Work and Pensions can continue to provide to ministerial Government Departments to help them improve their delivery of this process. We are committed to supporting these recommendations and will be working with ministerial Government Departments to communicate best practice and further advice and guidance in order to improve their delivery of this support to their disabled staff.
Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit
John Mann: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions whether there are circumstances in which the award of industrial injury disablement benefit may result in a reduction in income for the recipient as a result of interaction with other benefits. [318947]
Jonathan Shaw: Receipt of industrial injuries disablement benefit should not result in an overall reduction in income.
However, it is taken into account when assessing entitlement to income-related benefits this is because industrial injuries disablement benefit is compensation paid for loss of faculty as a result of an industrial accident or disease and is not intended to meet specific additional costs arising from the disability.
For all the income-related benefits-income support; jobseeker's allowance (income based); income-related employment and support allowance; pension credit; housing benefit; and council tax benefit-industrial injuries disablement benefit is taken fully into account when determining entitlement.
In determining entitlement to incapacity benefit, contribution-based employment and support allowance and contribution-based jobseeker's allowance, industrial injuries disablement benefit is not taken into account; however, any unemployability supplement payable with industrial injuries disablement benefit is taken fully into account.
Industrial injuries disablement benefit is not taken into account in the award of disability living allowance or attendance allowance.
Redundancy: Public Sector
Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the (a) voluntary and (b) involuntary redundancy rates in the public sector were in each (i) region and (ii) industrial category in each year since 1997. [318686]
Mr. McFadden: I have been asked to reply.
Estimates of the total number of redundancies are available from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). However there is no available disaggregation between voluntary and involuntary redundancies or a regional breakdown.
The LFS provides information for whether employees work in the public or private sectors. However individuals recently made redundant are instead classified according
to the industrial group of their previous job. The industrial group 'public administration, education and health' may act as a very broad approximation of the public sector. Although a large fraction of employees in and redundancies from the this industrial group are likely to be in the public sector, private sector firms also operate within this industry whilst there are also public sector employees in other sectors.
BIS estimates of redundancies from public administration, education and health and all other industries are provided in the third and fourth columns of Table 1 for the first quarter of each year since 1999, the earliest date available. These figures should only be treated as indicative as the LFS is a self classification survey completed by individuals. Some individuals are unlikely to identify exactly the industry in which they work.
The second column of Table 1 reports Office for National Statistics published figures for total economy-wide redundancy rates. These do not exactly match the other columns due to missing values in the industrial classification of redundancies.
| Table 1: First quarter redundancy rates 1997-2009. Not seasonally adjusted. | |||
| Industrial breakdown | |||
| ONS total first quarter redundancy rates | Public administration, education and health | All other industries | |
| Source: ONS Economic and Labour Market Statistics (column 2) and BIS analysis of Labour Force Survey (columns 3 and 4). The data is not seasonally adjusted although there are seasonal variations in the number of redundancies. | |||
Social Security Benefits: Disabled
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many and what proportion of claimants of (a) incapacity benefit and (b) severe disablement allowance have left the benefit for employment in each of the last five years. [318796]
Jonathan Shaw [holding answer 25 February 2010]: The Department does not have the data highlighting the destinations of off-flows from incapacity benefits. One of the primary reasons for this is that not everyone leaving benefits tells the Department their destination. The Department has carried out research into other sources of information on destinations, but the results so far are not sufficiently complete for regular publication.
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) what the primary work limiting condition was for claimants of (a) incapacity benefit and (b) employment and support allowance in the latest period for which information is available; [319023]
(2) what estimate she has made of the (a) number and (b) proportion of claimants of (i) incapacity benefit and (ii) employment and support allowance in each main disease group. [319174]
Jonathan Shaw [h olding answer 26 February]: To qualify for incapacity benefit/severe disablement allowance, claimants have to undertake a medical assessment of incapacity for work called the personal capability assessment. Therefore, the medical condition recorded on the claim form does not in itself confer entitlement to benefit. This means that the decision for a customer who has claimed incapacity benefit/severe disablement allowance would be based on their ability to carry out a range of activities in the personal capability assessment. Causes of incapacity are based on the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, published by the World Health Organisation. Data by medical conditions is not yet available for employment and support allowance. The available information is in the table.
| Incapacity benefit and severe disablement allowance claimants by published diagnosis group Great Britain and abroad-August 2009 | ||
| Total | Proportion of all diagnosis | |
|
Diseases of the blood and blood forming organs and certain diseases involving the immune mechanism | ||
|
Diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue | ||
|
Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities | ||
|
Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified | ||
|
Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes | ||
|
Factors influencing health status and contact with health services | ||
| Notes: (1) Figures are rounded to the nearest 10 and proportions to one decimal place. (2) Data published at http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/tabtool.asp Source: Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study 100 per cent data. | ||
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