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1131245

registered interest
date	11/06/2019
answering body	Department for Work and Pensions
answering dept id	29
answering dept short name	Work and Pensions
answering dept sort name	Work and Pensions
hansard heading	Universal Credit: Repayments
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 19 June 2019 to Question 260559 on universal credit, what assessment she has made of the average length of time taken to repay in full advance payments made under universal credit.
tabling member constituency	Vale of Clwyd
tabling member printed	Chris Ruane
uin	263065
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 19/06/2019 answer text <p>The Department encourages all Universal Credit claimants to actively consider how best to manage their personal budget, with additional advice and support available from work coaches and case managers. When an advance payment is appropriate, claimants decide what percentage of their expected monthly award to apply for and over what period to repay it, up to a maximum of 12 monthly instalments.</p><p> </p><p>Claimants have the ability to make the decision for themselves on the time period for repayment. Most claimants (around 85%) choose to repay their advance over a 12-month period, with others repaying in a shorter timeframe.</p><p> </p><p>The Department has taken a number of steps to ensure that advances meet the needs of claimants and that recovery arrangements are personalised and reasonable. From October 2019 we are reducing the maximum rate of deductions to 30 per cent and from October 2021 we are increasing the maximum recovery period for advances from 12 to 16 months.</p> answering member constituency Reading West answering member printed Alok Sharma question first answered 19/06/2019 17:00:48 answering member 4014 label Biography information for Lord Sharma previous answer version 123347 answering member constituency Reading West answering member printed Alok Sharma answering member 4014 label Biography information for Lord Sharma
tabling member	534 label Biography information for Chris Ruane

1131364

registered interest
date	11/06/2019
answering body	Department for Work and Pensions
answering dept id	29
answering dept short name	Work and Pensions
answering dept sort name	Work and Pensions
hansard heading	Universal Credit: Overpayments
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit overpayments her Department has made in the Vale of Clwyd in each of the last five years, and what the cause for overpayment was in each such case.
tabling member constituency	Vale of Clwyd
tabling member printed	Chris Ruane
uin	263066
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 18/06/2019 answer text <p>The specific breakdown requested is not available. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has no business need for a breakdown of this type and therefore our systems do not have this functionality.</p><p> </p><p>DWP is committed to preventing overpayments from occurring.</p><p> </p><p>The Department ensures that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect claimants who have deductions from their benefit to repay overpayments. There are maximum rates of deduction that are set out in legislation, and if a claimant is struggling they can contact the Department’s Debt Management Team to discuss lowering their repayment rate.</p><p> </p><p>DWP is constantly improving its data and analytical tools to detect and prevent issues as early as possible. DWP works to ensure claimants are aware of their obligation to report any changes in their circumstances. We are constantly reviewing our approach to make sure it is as effective as possible.</p> answering member constituency Reading West answering member printed Alok Sharma question first answered 18/06/2019 15:42:47 answering member 4014 label Biography information for Lord Sharma previous answer version 123348 answering member constituency Reading West answering member printed Alok Sharma answering member 4014 label Biography information for Lord Sharma
tabling member	534 label Biography information for Chris Ruane

1130135

registered interest
date	05/06/2019
answering body	Department for Work and Pensions
answering dept id	29
answering dept short name	Work and Pensions
answering dept sort name	Work and Pensions
hansard heading	Universal Credit
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the proportion of universal credit claimants who have had payments reduced because they had previously received advances.
tabling member constituency	Vale of Clwyd
tabling member printed	Chris Ruane
uin	260559
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 10/06/2019 answer text <p>Universal Credit (UC) new claim advances provide access to a payment for those in financial need, which can be accessed on the same day, until their first UC payment is due. Claimants can access up to 100% of the total expected monthly award, for which they can pay back over a period of up to 12 months.</p><p> </p><p>The Department has taken a number of steps to ensure that advances meet the needs of claimants and that recovery arrangements are personalised and reasonable. From October 2019 we are reducing the maximum rate of deductions to 30 per cent and from October 2021 we are increasing the maximum recovery period for advances from 12 to 16 months.</p><p> </p><p>The latest available data is for eligible claims to UC Full Service that are due a payment in February 2019. Of these claims 44% had a deduction to repay a UC advance.</p><p> </p><p>Notes:</p><p> </p><ol><li>Data has been sourced from UC Full Service.</li></ol> answering member constituency Reading West answering member printed Alok Sharma question first answered 10/06/2019 14:00:26 answering member 4014 label Biography information for Lord Sharma
tabling member	534 label Biography information for Chris Ruane

1128290

registered interest
date	22/05/2019
answering body	Department for Work and Pensions
answering dept id	29
answering dept short name	Work and Pensions
answering dept sort name	Work and Pensions
hansard heading	Department for Work and Pensions: Metro Newspaper
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the cost to the public purse of her Department's advertising in the 22 May 2019 edition of the Metro newspaper.
tabling member constituency	Vale of Clwyd
tabling member printed	Chris Ruane
uin	257471
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 11/06/2019 answer text <p>The Department provides services to around 22 million people, and has a responsibility to communicate policy and essential information to claimants and other key audiences, in a similar way to other government departments. Newspaper advertising contributes to our routine communications activity that has been running alongside the rollout of Universal Credit since 2013.</p><p> </p><p>The Universal Credit Uncovered media partnership with the Metro is currently underway and running for a further six weeks so we are unable to provide accurate spend to date figures for the partnership. However, we can commit to publish final full spend on the partnership at the end of July once all activity has concluded.</p><p> </p><p>The information used for the partnership was sourced by DWP officials. The content features actual claimant case studies and interviews from Jobcentre work coaches, and the advertorials have been developed in partnership with the Metro.</p> answering member constituency Reading West answering member printed Alok Sharma grouped question UIN 257404 257542 257563 257573 question first answered 11/06/2019 16:36:52 answering member 4014 label Biography information for Lord Sharma
tabling member	534 label Biography information for Chris Ruane

1127662

registered interest
date	20/05/2019
answering body	Department for Work and Pensions
answering dept id	29
answering dept short name	Work and Pensions
answering dept sort name	Work and Pensions
hansard heading	Social Security Benefits: Disqualification
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many three year sanctions were issued by her Department to social security benefit recipients in each of the last 10 years.
tabling member constituency	Vale of Clwyd
tabling member printed	Chris Ruane
uin	256249
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 03/06/2019 answer text <p>Information on the number of three years’ sanctions is recorded on our systems and we centrally collate some Management Information. However, the total number cannot be calculated as it is collected across different benefits on different systems and is not centrally collated in a way that allows analysis to be undertaken easily. An extensive interrogation of our systems would be required in order to provide the information requested, which would incur disproportionate cost.</p><p> </p><p>Nevertheless, from the Department’s quarterly sanctions publication, in table 1.7 of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/benefit-sanctions-statistics-to-january-2019" target="_blank">supporting data tables</a>, 2,904 individuals have received three (or more) high level JSA sanction failures, from October 2012 to January 2019. It is not possible to readily unpick how many of these were 3 year sanctions (if two high level sanctions received by an individual were more than a year apart then that would mean they would not have been escalated up to a 3 year sanction duration after their 3rd high level failure). The published data on individuals that received a third high level JSA sanction cannot be split by year. This is because the data is not structured in a way to readily analyse this.</p> answering member constituency Reading West answering member printed Alok Sharma question first answered 03/06/2019 12:46:47 answering member 4014 label Biography information for Lord Sharma
tabling member	534 label Biography information for Chris Ruane