Department for Work and Pensions

History

The Department was created on 8 June 2001 as a merger of the Department of Social Security, Employment Service and the policy groups of the Department for Education and Employment involved in employment policy and international issues.

The Department was initially tasked with creating Jobcentre Plus and the Pensions Service from the remains of the Employment Service and the Benefits Agency. The Department is therefore responsible for welfare and pension policy. It aims "to help its customers become financially independent and to help reduce child poverty".

Ministers

The department's ministers are:

The Permanent Secretary is Robert Devereux.

The Pension Service

With the creation of the department in June 2001, the Pension Service was created, bringing together many different departments and divisions. The Pension Service is a 'dedicated service for current and future pensioners'.

The Pension Service consists of local Pension Centres and centrally-based centres, many of latter are based at the Tyneview Park complex in Newcastle upon Tyne. At Tyneview Park the following centres are found:

Local Pension Centres deal with localised claims for state pension and retirement related benefits. Pension Centres are found all over the country. Benefits dealt with at local Pension Centres include:

Disability and Carers Service

The Disability and Carers Service offers financial support for those who are disabled and their carers, whether in or out of employment. The DCS have offices throughout the country and deal with the following benefits:

Former structure

Prior to 2008, The Pension Service and the Disability and Carers Service were two separate executive agencies however the decision was made in April 2008 to merge both agencies into one entity named The Pension, Disability and Carers Service.

Both former agencies kept their corporate branding and provided services under their separate identities. The decision was made due to the two agencies sharing roughly fifty percent of the same customers and as a single agency, the rationalisation of services would provide a better service for customers.

The status of PDCS as an executive agency (and its existence as a merged entity) was removed on 1 October 2011 with the functions being brought back inside the department and both The Pension Service and the Disability and Carers Service becoming distinct entities once again. Prior to July 2012 the Child Support Agency was the operating arm of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC).

All are now operated wholly from within the department, with the names continuing as brand identifiers.

Public bodies and estate

The department's public bodies include:

The department has corporate buildings in London, Leeds, Blackpool, Newcastle upon Tyne, Warrington and Sheffield. Jobcentre Plus, The Pension Service and the Disability and Carers Service operate through a network of around 1,000 Jobcentres, contact centres and benefit processing centres across the UK.

After the departure of John Suffolk as Government Chief Information Officer (CIO) in November 2010, the current CIO of the Department for Work and Pensions, Joe Harley, was picked to replace him.

Budget

The total annual budget of the department in 2011-12 is £151.6 billion, representing approximately 28% of total UK Government spending. The department spends a far greater share of national wealth than any other department in Britain, by a wide margin. The department spends an average of £348.9 million with suppliers a month.

A report of February 2012 stated that a sum amounting to billions of pounds of money payable through possible benefit claims had not been claimed. In 2009-2010 the Dept stated £1.95 billion job-seekers allowance, £2 billion income support and employment and support allowance, £2.4 billion in council tax, £2.8bn in pension credit and £3.1 billion for housing benefit; in total £12.25 billion had not been claimed.

Research

The department is a major commissioner of external social science research, with the objective of providing the evidence base needed to inform departmental strategy, policy-making and delivery. The department has developed and uses various microsimulation and other models, including the Policy Simulation Model (for appraisal of policy options), Pensim2 (to create projections of pension entitlements up to 2100) and Inform (to produce the Department's benefit caseload forecasts). Datasets held include the LLMDB and the Family Resources Survey.

During 2012 the department announced records of the number of people born outside of the United Kingdom ("non-UK nationals") claiming work-related benefits from 2011, using data already collated within the department together with those of HM Revenue and Customs and the UK Border Agency (whose duties are now fulfilled by UK Visas and Immigration).

Devolution and parity

Employment, health and safety, and social security policy are reserved matters in Scotland.

Northern Ireland has parity with Great Britain in three areas:

Policy in these areas is technically devolved but, in practice, follows policy set by Parliament to provide consistency across the United Kingdom. Employment and health and safety policy are fully devolved.

The department's main counterparts in Northern Ireland are:

Controversy

In August 2015 the department admitted using fictional stories from made-up claimants on leaflets advertising the positive impact of benefit sanctions, following a Freedom of Information request from Welfare Weekly, claiming that they were for "illustrative purposes only" and that it was "quite wrong" to pass these off as genuine quotes.

Later that month figures were released which showed that between December 2011 and February 2014, 2,650 people died shortly after their Work Capability Assessment told them that they should be finding work. The DWP had fought hard for the figures not to be released, with chief minister Iain Duncan Smith at one point telling Parliament that they did not exist.

According to research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health by Oxford University and Liverpool University, there were an additional 590 suicides between 2010 and 2013 in areas where Work Capability Assessments were carried out. The researchers claimed the DWP had introduced the policy of moving people off benefits without understanding the consequences.