Health & Social Care
51mentions · last 12 months↓
View full analysis →This Commons Select Committee scrutinises the Department for Work and Pensions and its policies on welfare, employment, and pensions. The Committee takes oral evidence from government officials, external experts, and affected groups during public sessions held at Westminster. It conducts inquiries into specific policy areas and publishes findings to inform parliamentary debate and departmental practice. Recent inquiries have examined Skills England's approach to youth employment and regional skills provision, reflecting ongoing concern about school-to-work transitions. The Committee investigated the Child Poverty Strategy through an academic panel session in April 2026, hearing from researchers on the effectiveness of anti-poverty measures. It has also scrutinised major pension policy changes, including State Pension Age transition arrangements and the implementation of DWP ministerial reforms, whilst exploring support for carers beyond recommendations from the Sayce Review.
24 sessions published in the last 12 months
Click any cell in the heatmap to see the sessions held that day and the insights extracted from them.
465 insights
15 Jul 2026
The committee scrutinised how the Child Maintenance Service handles fairness, affordability, enforcement, safeguarding and communications. Witnesses from Gingerbread, Both Parents Matter and Surviving Economic Abuse agreed the current system is too opaque, formulaic and stressful, but they differed on some remedies: Sam Morfey argued for fundamental reform of the calculation to reflect both parents’ income and contact costs, while Abigail Wood and Sara D’Arcy stressed better enforcement, investigations, trauma-informed practice and safer transitions to collect and pay. The panel welcomed the Government’s planned move to collect and pay only, its liability-order reforms and the proposed non-compliance fee, but said key details, dates and resourcing are still missing. Strong concerns were raised that the CMS can worsen child poverty, enable economic abuse, and fail to identify hidden income or respond effectively to vulnerable parents.
01 Jul 2026
The session scrutinised the child poverty strategy through lived experience testimony from parents and campaigners. Witnesses broadly welcomed measures such as ending the two-child limit, expanding free school meals and breakfast clubs, and improving newborn housing conditions, but argued the strategy still leaves major gaps on housing costs, childcare, energy bills, SEND and mental health support, and benefit adequacy. Witnesses repeatedly pressed for measurable child poverty targets, stronger accountability across devolved nations, simpler and more automatic support, and continued co-production with people who have lived experience.
17 Jun 2026
The Committee scrutinised the DWP’s work on employment support, safeguarding, welfare reform, child poverty, pensions adequacy and pension-credit take-up, as well as departmental culture and complaints handling. Pat McFadden defended the Government’s approach as shifting the system toward work and opportunity, while Sir Peter Schofield set out delivery plans on Connect to Work, youth hubs, Access to Work backlog clearance, and a near-term publication of the PHSO action plan. The session also extracted positions on benefit adequacy, the role of devolution and data-sharing, and whether to set formal targets for child poverty and NEET reduction.
10 Jun 2026
The Committee scrutinised DWP’s progress one year on from its safeguarding vulnerable claimants report, focusing on whether safeguarding, training, referrals and multi-agency working had improved. Witnesses welcomed some gains — especially ACSSL links, centralised training, written statements and some collaborative engagement — but said change was uneven, slow and overly reactive. They pressed for stronger mandatory safeguarding training, better referrals, clearer and more transparent learning from serious incidents, and a shift away from DWP-controlled consultation toward genuine co-production with disabled people. A major area of concern was universal credit managed migration from ESA, where witnesses said vulnerable claimants were falling through gaps, losing money or safeguards, and suffering due to inflexible systems, poor referrals and inconsistent use of easements. The session also covered sanctions, accessibility, overpayments, carer’s allowance and the need for statutory advocacy/advice, with repeated calls for DWP to cede power, improve transparency and rethink culture and conditionality.
03 Jun 2026
The Committee scrutinised whether the child poverty strategy is ambitious enough and how it will be delivered locally. Witnesses broadly welcomed the strategy’s income measures, especially scrapping the two-child limit, but argued it needs stronger action on housing costs, local services, data, long-term funding, and support for families facing NRPF, lone-parent poverty, care experience and migration-related barriers. The panel also pressed for child poverty action plans, better monitoring, and stronger cross-government alignment, while witnesses flagged the crisis and resilience fund, family hubs and social outcomes commissioning as important but uneven or incomplete tools.
20 May 2026
The Work and Pensions Committee’s 20 May 2026 inquiry session scrutinised the drivers of youth NEET (not in education, employment or training) and the UK’s approach to education, skills and welfare. Witnesses emphasised that NEET is driven by health/inactivity and structural labour-market weaknesses, not just unemployment. The discussion stressed horizontal, cross-government reform over vertical silos, with a planned two-phase review (diagnostic then solutions), greater employer and local-authority engagement, and learning from international models (Germany’s dual-system, Denmark/Norway youth guarantees). Panel members and witnesses urged a “mission-based” governance approach and highlighted housing, transport, and welfare incentives as critical levers. The session also brought in OECD and German/VET evidence on apprenticeships, costs, and parity of esteem, and contrasted UK policies with the EU Youth Guarantee framework, noting the need for earlier, more integrated, well-funded interventions to reduce NEET prevalence and long-term scarring among young people.
20 May 2026
15 Jul 2026