Disallowance of Benefit (Hansard, 29 March 1993)

§ Mr. McLoughlin

Responsibility for the subject of 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 Mr. Rhodri Morgan, dated March 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 about publishing tables for cases of disallowance of benefit. This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of the Agency. To ensure that the most effective use is made of our total adjudication resource, cases where there is a doubt about entitlement to benefit are transferred between regions to match workloads with handling capacity. It does not necessarily follow, therefore, that decisions made in an individual sector office relate to cases referred by my local offices in the same geographical area or region. Information about the number of decisions made is not therefore collated or published by sector office. Reports on the volumes of adjudication decisions given both nationally and by originating geographical region are, however, collated and published. These reports, entitled Analysis of Adjudication Officers' Decisions, contain details of the number and type of decisions given during the period, and have been recently revised to include information on the percentage of adverse decisions. At the time of writing, this information is available up to and including September 1992 and can be obtained from the House of Commons Library. I hope this is helpful. As decided by the Administration 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.