Written questions by Hamilton.

What assessment she has made of the potential merits of a full review of statutory maternity pay, accrued annual leave flexibility for teachers and the gender equality implications of statutory maternity pay.

The Government is committed to making life better for families and has announced a review of the parental leave and pay system. All current and upcoming parental leave and pay entitlements are in scope of the Parental Leave and Pay Review, including Statutory Maternity Pay.Specific occupational maternity and contractual leave arrangements for teachers are the remit of the Department for Education, employers and unions.

If he will make it his policy to review the 18-month duration period of the Bereavement Support Payment; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of (a) uprating the payment in line with inflation and (b) aligning the payment more closely with child‑related benefits.

Bereavement Support Payment (BSP) provides support during the acute period following a bereavement. Unlike its predecessor Widowed Parents Allowance, which could be paid for as long as there was entitlement to Child Benefit, BSP is not an income replacement benefit. Where longer term support is needed, benefits such as Universal Credit have been designed to provide assistance with ongoing living costs. The rate of BSP is reviewed on a discretionary basis each year as part of the annual uprating process.

Whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of extending transitional protection under Universal Credit to include couples who form a household which becomes eligible for Universal Credit and consequently (a) reduce the overall level of welfare expenditure and (b) free up social housing.

No assessment has been made. Transitional Protection was introduced as part of the Move to UC journey to ensure legacy benefit customers maintain the same level of entitlement on moving to UC at the point of transition. Transitional protection is considered for both single and couple households that manage migrate to UC. It is not extended to customers in receipt of the transitional element that have a significant change of circumstances or where a couple forms and makes a new claim to UC. The Universal Credit (Managed Migration Pilot and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2019 made provision for transitional protection. DWP has no plans to amend the regulations to extend transitional protection to include couples who form a household after they have moved to Universal Credit.

Whether her Department plans to review the loss of transitional protection under Universal Credit for claimants who form a couple, including where one partner acts as a carer.

Transitional Protection is designed to give customers notified to move to Universal Credit time to adjust. It is not intended to permanently replicate legacy benefits and ends when there is no longer a meaningful comparison between a household’s final legacy benefit and Universal Credit awards, such as due to a relevant change in circumstances. The relevant change of circumstances that end the Transitional Element include a sustained decrease in earnings, formation of a new benefit unit, such as a couple separating or a single customer becoming a member of a couple, or where a Universal Credit claim terminates. There are no plans to review this loss of transitional protection even if one partner is a carer.

If she will review the decision to freeze Local Housing Allowance rates until 2026.

Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates are reviewed annually, usually at an Autumn fiscal event. At last year’s Autumn Budget, the decision to maintain LHA at current levels for 2025/26 was taken after a range of factors were considered, including rental data, the impacts of LHA rates, rate increases in April 2024 and the wider fiscal context. The April 2024 one-year LHA increase cost an additional £1.2bn in 2024/25, and approximately £7bn over 5 years. Any future decisions on LHA policy will be taken in the context of the Government’s missions, goals on housing and the challenging fiscal context. Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities to those who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.

What assessment she has made of the potential impact of not uprating the Local Housing Allowance on (a) poverty and (b) homelessness; and whether she plans to increase rates in line with rental costs.

No assessment has been made using current economic assumptions and methodological practices. However, the department has previously produced a poverty impact assessment using OBR economic assumptions from 30th October 2024 on an outdated version of the model. Using this methodology, the department has estimated the poverty impact of uprating the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) to the 30th percentile of rents in a Local Authority compared to freezing it. Uprating the LHA has been estimated to decrease the number of individuals in relative poverty after housing costs by 50,000 (0.1%) individuals in 25/26 and 100,000 (0.1%) individuals in 28/29 compared to freezing it. Estimates have been rounded to the nearest 50,000 and are on a UK basis. The poverty impacts are independent of the underlying trends in poverty so they are not an estimate of the total change in poverty over time. Since this version of the model, the move to UC acceleration announced at Autumn Budget has been incorporated into the model and the economic assumptions have been updated to OBR's Spring Statement 2025 Round 2 assumptions. The causes of homelessness are multi-faceted and often complex, they interact dynamically making it difficult to isolate the relative importance of individual factors. Therefore, no assessment has been made on this basis for the impact on homelessness. At last year’s Autumn Budget, the Secretary of State’s decision to maintain Local Housing Allowance (LHA) at current levels for 2025/26 was taken after a range of factors were considered, including rental data, the impacts of LHA rates, the fact that rates were increased in April 2024, and the wider fiscal context. The April 2024 one-year LHA increase cost an additional £1.2bn in 2024/25, and approximately £7bn over 5 years. Any future decisions on LHA policy will be taken in the context of the Government’s missions, goals on housing, and the fiscal context. For those who need further support, Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities. DHPs can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.

What steps she is taking to reduce delays in the administration of Carer's Allowance; and what steps she is taking to inform carers about the Carer's Allowance earnings threshold.

Recruitment and deployment of additional resources is taking place to enable the Carer’s Allowance (CA) unit to meet the consistent increased demand, which should reduce the clearance times for new claims to CA. DWP has reviewed its communications to ensure the increase in the CA earnings threshold from 7 April 2025 is clearly visible. These include: Advice on GOV.UK,Annual benefit uprating notification letters. These are issued to customers over a 7-week period from the beginning of March, and include the new weekly rate of CA and the new earnings limit,Use of our advocates’ platform, such as Carers UK,Clerical claim form supporting notes,Upskilling our telephony agents who deal with inbound customer enquiries,Focussed media coverage on the CA threshold increase - press releases, Facebook etc.

Whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of the introduction of a Commissioner for Older People and Ageing in England.

DWP offers employment support for eligible older people through the network of Jobcentres across the UK. The White Paper published on 26 November focuses on support for people who are economically inactive, people who are looking for work or want to progress, and people who are at risk of economic inactivity despite having a desire to stay in work. This includes and goes beyond people who are claiming benefits. The new national jobs and careers service will be instrumental in achieving this objective. This service will be available for anyone, including older people, who wants to look for work, wants help to increase their earnings, or who wants help to change their career or re-train. The service will be tailored to local needs. We are committing to the establishment of ‘collaboration committees’ to further develop the reforms set out in our Pathways to Work Green Paper. These we will bring together groups of people for specific work areas, collaborating with civil servants to provide discussion, challenge, and recommendations. Each group will have a different mix of people including older people. The department also engages with employers to ensure their recruitment practises attract and support the retention of older people and encouraging employers to sign the Age-Friendly employer pledge.

What assessment she has made of the potential impact of her Department's proposed welfare reforms on levels of economic inactivity.

No estimate has yet been made. As announced in the Green Paper, we will build towards a guarantee of personalised employment, health and skills support for anyone on out of work benefits with a work-limiting health condition or disability who wants it. Catalysed by an additional £1 billion a year by 2029/2030, this will improve returns to work and prevent economic inactivity, as part of rebalancing spending towards work over welfare. A further programme of analysis to support development of the proposals in the Green Paper will be developed and undertaken in the coming months. As stated in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook, OBR plan to work with the Treasury and DWP to further scrutinise both the direct and indirect effects of these welfare and employment support policies ahead of their next forecast, alongside the effects of any further measures from the Green Paper that have been sufficiently developed.

What steps she is taking to ensure that people that are unable to work due to (a) long-term illness, (b) disability and (c) other circumstances are adequately supported following her planned reforms to the welfare system.

The social security system will always be there for those who can’t work. As part of making changes to the payment rates in Universal Credit, we will ensure that those with the most severe, lifelong conditions who will never be able to work have their incomes protected. Twinned with this, as we set out in the Pathways to Work, our ambition is to guarantee personalised employment support to anyone claiming out of work benefits (UC and contributory) with a health condition or disability who wants to work but is currently outside the labour market. We propose that this guarantee will have a particular focus on early support, by offering everyone who claims out of work benefits and has a work-limiting health condition or disability, or who has recently been in receipt of PIP, with a support conversation. The support conversation will help identify the best next steps, including a range of personalised and more intensive support for anyone who wants it. We want our offer to be flexible, personalised and built on the evidence.

What steps she plans to take to (a) reform (i) employment support and (ii) disability services and (b) support more people into work.

We announced in the Pathways to Work Green Paper that we would establish a new guarantee of support for all disabled people and people with health conditions claiming out of work benefits who want help to get into or return to work, backed up by £1 billion of new funding. As the Green Paper notes, we are keen to engage widely on the design of this guarantee and the components needed to deliver it. To get this right, we will be seeking input from a wide range of stakeholders including devolved governments, local health systems, local government and Mayoral Strategic Authorities, private and voluntary sector providers, employers and potential users. We will confirm further details in due course after we have completed our consultation process.

What steps her Department is taking to support PIP claimants into work.

We announced in the Pathways to Work Green Paper that we would establish a new guarantee of support, backed up by £1 billion of new funding. We want this guarantee to have a particular focus on early support, by offering everyone who claims UC and has a work-limiting health condition or who has recently been in receipt of PIP, with a support conversation. This would be focused on their goals and the help they need to achieve them.

What steps she is taking to ensure that changes to (a) Universal Credit taper rates and (b) other benefits (i) encourage more people into work and (ii) support people in work.

As the Chancellor has set out, this Government is reforming the social security system to support people into work, while protecting people who will never be able to – making the system sustainable so that it is there to help those of us that need it now and long into the future.These changes come on top of our Get Britain Working White Paper which set out the biggest reforms to employment support for a generation, and the increase in the Universal Credit work allowance to £684 per month for those without housing costs or £411 per month for those with housing costs.In addition, Universal Credit withdraws financial support at a steady rate allowing those on low incomes to keep more of what they earn. It does this by applying a single taper rate of 55% to net earnings before reducing the amount of Universal Credit someone is eligible for. This means claimants still benefit from their income as 45 pence in every pound earned would be kept. In some cases, claimants may also benefit from a work allowance, which is the amount someone can earn before the 55% taper is applied to their net earnings.These policies are kept under regular review to ensure they continue to make work pay and provide the correct incentives to allow those receiving Universal Credit to move into and progress in work.

What steps she is taking to improve the PIP assessment process for (a) all claimants and (b) claimants with fluctuating conditions.

It is important that all people claiming Personal Independence Payment (PIP) are able to access our services and that they do not face obstacles in applying and communicating with the Department and its providers. In the Green Paper Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working published on 18 March we outline plans to improve the experience for people who use the health and disability benefits system, including exploring ways to use evidence from eligibility for other services to reduce the need for some people with very severe conditions to undergo a full PIP functional assessment, digitalising the transfer of information from the NHS (with consent) to speed up the process of assessment, and look at recording assessments as standard to increase trust in the process. We also announced plans to launch a process to review the PIP assessment. We will bring together a range of experts, stakeholders and people with lived experience to consider how best to do this and to start the process as part of preparing for a review. We will provide further details as plans progress. The Health Transformation Programme is also transforming the entire PIP service, including introducing the option to apply and track applications online. The transformed service will improve how we gather health information, and tailor the process to the customer’s needs and circumstances, offering a better customer experience and improving trust in our services and decisions.

What steps she is taking to provide personalised support to jobseekers.

We are ending the one-size-fits-all approach by reforming both the welfare and employment support systems to Get Britain Working, opening-up employment opportunities in a fair and more sustainable way to boost economic growth. We announced in the Pathways to Work Green Paper that we would establish a new guarantee of personalised support for all disabled people and people with health conditions claiming out of work benefits who want help to get into or return to work, backed up by £1 billion of new funding. This is alongside our Connect to Work and WorkWell programmes that provide support to disabled people, those with health conditions, and those with complex barriers to employment. Our new jobs and careers service will help more people into work and to progress in their careers with an enhanced digital offer and self-serve options whilst our Youth Guarantee will ensure that all young people aged 18-21 in England have access to quality training opportunities, apprenticeships, or employment support. Through our local Get Britain Working plans we are asking local government and Jobcentre Plus leaders to work collaboratively to join up the local work, health, and skills provision and tailor this to local needs because places, like people, need tailored support.

What steps her Department is taking to help support unpaid carers.

Unpaid carers play a vital role in supporting elderly or disabled relatives or friends. Sometimes unpaid carers will need to turn to the benefit system for financial support, so it is right that we keep Carer’s Allowance under review, to see if it is meeting its objectives, and giving unpaid carers the help and support they need and deserve. Unpaid carers may be able to receive financial and/or employment support from the department depending on their circumstances. This includes Carer’s Allowance and mean tested benefits such as Universal Credit. And those caring for less than 35 hours a week on Universal Credit can receive individualised employment support through their Jobcentre Plus work coach who can tailor work related requirements, such as searching for work, to fit their caring responsibilities so they can combine paid work and unpaid care. Unpaid carers may continue to be able to receive benefits if they choose to combine their caring responsibilities with paid work, meaning they can increase their overall income (eligibility rules apply). Carers (providing at least 35 hours per week) of severely disabled people may be eligible for Universal Credit Carer Element and/or Carer’s Allowance. They are not required to undertake any work-related activity, but can access employment support on a voluntary basis if they wish.

What steps her Department is taking to reduce the cost of living for people with disabilities.

In England, the Household Support Fund (HSF) is a scheme providing discretionary support towards the cost of essentials, such as food and energy to those most in need, including disabled people. The current HSF is running from 1 October 2024 until 31 March 2025, with an additional £421m being provided to enable the extension in England, plus funding for the Devolved Governments through the Barnett formula to be spent at their discretion, as usual. This winter, we are continuing to deliver the £150 Warm Home Discount to eligible low-income households and we expect it again to support well over three million households. The extra costs disability benefits are a contribution to meeting the extra costs that arise from a disability or long term health condition. These benefits were not subject to the benefits freeze, were most recently uprated by 6.7 per cent from 8 April 2024 and were qualifying benefits for the Disability Cost of Living Payments paid in 2022 and 2023. They are not means–tested, are non-contributory and thus paid regardless of any income or savings. They are also tax-free and worth up to £184.30 a week, or over £9,580 a year. The extra costs disability benefits can be paid in addition to other financial support that those with a health condition or disability may be eligible for, such as Employment and Support Allowance, Universal Credit, premiums and additional amounts paid within the income-related benefits, Carer’s Allowance, Motability and the Blue Badge scheme.