Written questions by Hurley.

What assessment his Department have made on the potential impact of place-based employment support programmes such as JobsPlus in addressing levels of economic inactivity and unemployment.

Jobs Plus is a community-based model with strong potential to tackle inactivity and unemployment. The department is testing the model in ten social housing communities across England. Jobs Plus and other place-based programmes such as the Get Britain Working Trailblazers, Work Well and Connect to Work will be evaluated to assess their effectiveness in helping people enter and remain in work.

What assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of furniture provisions as a core component of the Crisis and Resilience Fund on people in receipt of Housing Benefit; and what steps he is taking to ensure that people experiencing a crisis can access essential items.

The new Crisis and Resilience Fund will be introduced from 1 April 2026. This represents the first ever multi-year settlement for locally delivered crisis support. This longer-term funding approach aims to enable local authorities to provide preventative support to communities – working with the voluntary and community sector – as well as assisting people when faced with a financial crisis We are working closely with local authorities and external stakeholders on the detailed design of the Crisis and Resilience Fund and we will issue further information on our planned approach in due course.

Whether people who receive the Universal Credit (UC) health element and do not receive the Personal Independence Payment daily living component will lose their entitlement to the UC health element once the Work Capability Assessment is abolished.

The Pathways to Work Green Paper announced that we would be scrapping the Work Capability Assessment and moving to a single assessment for financial support related to health and disability benefits. The UC and PIP payment Bill currently before Parliament sets out that existing claimants will continue to receive additional financial support for health on Universal Credit health (the LCWRA addition), frozen at its current cash value, until 2029-30. We are currently considering how the future system will operate and will provide further information, including on transitioning to a reformed system, in a White Paper in the autumn.

What steps her Department is taking to support disabled people into work in Southport constituency.

Disabled people in Southport deserve the same choices and chances to work as anyone else.That is why we will transform support for disabled people who can work to get the jobs they want and deserve, including by investing an additional £1 billion a year through our Pathways to work employment programme.

If she will bring forward legislative proposals to ensure equitable treatment of parents with shared custody arrangements by the Child Maintenance Service.

The Child Maintenance Service operates on the principle that both parents have financial responsibility for their child, including their food and clothing, as well as contributing towards the associated costs of running the home that the child lives in. Reductions can be made for the extra cost of care where it is shared by the paying parent. The paying parent must have overnight care of any qualifying children for at least 52 nights a year, equivalent of 1 night per week. The amount payable is reduced by a maximum of fifty per cent within bands based on the number of nights overnight care is provided over a 12-month period. The bands are used to give greater stability to maintenance payments and as a result there is greater reliability of payments, which contributes towards the welfare of the children in the case. If evidence shows that both parties are providing equal day-to-day care of a qualifying child, in addition to sharing overnight care, there is no requirement for either parent to pay child maintenance.