Benefit Week (Hansard, 11 June 1993)

§ Mr. Michael Forsyth

[holding answer 8 June 1993]: Responsibility for the subject or the question has been delegated to the Employment Service agency under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from M. E. G. Fogden to Sir Cranley Onslow, dated 11 June 1993: As the Employment Service is an Executive Agency, the Secretary of State has asked me to write to you direct to respond to your Parliamentary Question to him about any plans he has to review the benefit week and associated signing arrangements in the interests of clients who may be 363W disadvantaged by the existing procedures. This is something which falls within the responsibilities he has delegated to me as Chief Executive of the Agency. If a client undertakes part-time work there are occasions when the amount of benefit they are entitled to depends on their signing day and I am assuming this also relates to your question. This is because unemployment benefit is disallowed where earning; for days falling in a benefit week exceed the weekly lower earnings limit, currently £56, and a client's signing day determines their benefit week. Although the rules concerning part-time work are drawn from Social Security legislation, there are some flexibilities available to us and we are always looking at ways of improving our procedures in order to offer a high quality service to our clients. We have recently carried out a review of our part-time worker procedures and several recommendations have been made to improve the service we provide. We are working towards introducing nationally the benefit week for regular part-time workers to end on Saturday, when all clients would be affected by the rules in the same way. This has the further advantage that it corresponds with the week used to assess the award of National Insurance contribution credits. I hope this is helpful. As decided by the Adminstration Committee of the House of Commons, Chief Executive replies to written Parliamentary Questions will now be published in the Official Report. I will also place a copy of this letter in the Library of the House.