We are not aware of any discussions which have taken place with the Welsh Government regarding the specifics of the executive co-operation arrangements of Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent councils. With Local Government being devolved, this would be a matter for Welsh Government to consider. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is continuing to work with the Welsh Government and local authorities in Wales to deliver a range of funded programmes to support communities and local growth, including through the Pride in Place Programme and Local Growth Fund.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and I both live in Wales and serve Welsh constituencies. We have a consistent presence in Wales as we conduct many visits, events and meetings in Wales on a regular basis.

Details of Ministerial visits and meetings are published on the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales’ website and in Quarterly Ministerial Transparency Returns. In addition, visits and meetings conducted in support of the Wales Office priorities are published in the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales Annual Report and Accounts.

The UK Government has provided extensive support to Blaenau Gwent. A typical household in Wales has received almost £2000 in UK Government support to help with the cost of living. This includes around 194,000 payments delivered in Blaenau Gwent through the Energy Bills Support Scheme. During the Covid-19 pandemic over 10,000 jobs were supported through the furlough scheme, around £19 million was claimed through the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme and around £34 million was given to businesses through government-backed business loans.

The UK Government has also supported innovation within Blaenau Gwent with around £680,000 awarded by Innovate UK since April 2019. Blaenau Gwent has also received around £48,000 through the Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme to level up local sports facilities. Blaenau Gwent will also benefit from UK Government funding to refurbish public tennis courts across the UK.

Our Semiconductor Strategy targets UK strengths, including compound semiconductors. As the home of the world's first compound semiconductor cluster, South East Wales, including Blaenau Gwent, is well placed to benefit from the Semiconductor strategy and the funding announced.

In addition, Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, the local authority for the Blaenau Gwent constituency, is receiving over £28 million from the UK Government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Blaenau Gwent is also receiving over £9 million from the Levelling Up Fund for a new High Value Engineering (HiVE) training and education facility based in Ebbw Vale. This is in addition to the £90,000 awarded to the Queen’s Ballroom in Tredegar through the Community Ownership Fund. Blaenau Gwent is also benefitting from the £1.2 billion Cardiff Capital Region City Deal, including a £2 million investment in Apex Manufacturing and a £1.7 million investment in Pulse Plastics.

This Government is investing in Wales like never before; over £790 million in four City and Regional Growth Deals covering the whole of Wales, £585 million for local authorities to invest through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, including over £100 million for the Multiply adult numeracy programme, £330 million in capital investment through the Levelling Up Fund and £3.2 million to preserve community assets through the Community Ownership Fund. Wales will benefit from two Freeports backed by £52 million, the British Business Bank’s new £130m Regional Investment Fund, and from Project Gigabit which will enable hard to reach communities to access lightning-fast gigabit capable broadband.

Data regarding the number of young people registered for the Kickstart scheme by constituency is not currently available.

Since its introduction, over 38 million applications have been facilitated nationally through the Individual Electoral Registration Digital Service, of which over 75% (29 million) of applications were made online via the Register to Vote website. Applications are processed locally by the Electoral Registration Officers who are responsible for completing the registration process and adding an individual to the electoral register. We therefore don’t have access to any statistics on the number of applications that do not complete this process. However, these may be held at the local level.

We aim to pay arrears on overturned cases as soon as we can, providing we have all the required information to do so, for example, up to date claimant bank details.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is not an income replacement benefit; it can be received in or out of work therefore hardship payments are not made in these circumstances.

The Department for Work and Pensions administers a wide range of benefits and allowances for which there are a range of conditions for entitlement. Some of these benefits may be of help, including Universal Credit.

This information is not held centrally.

HMCTS statistics are not calculated from receipt of the appeal to the hearing, but from receipt of the appeal to the disposal of the case. An appeal is not necessarily disposed of at its first hearing. The final disposal decision on the appeal may be reached after an earlier hearing had been adjourned (which may be directed by the judge for a variety of reasons, such as to seek further evidence), or after an earlier hearing date had been postponed (again, for a variety of reasons, often at the request of the appellant). An appeal may also have been decided at an earlier date by the First-tier Tribunal, only for the case to have gone on to the Upper Tribunal, to be returned once again to the First-tier, for its final disposal.

The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) appeals

In the Blaenau Gwent constituency, 170 appeals were completed in relation to PIP in 2017-18. Of these, 79% (130 appeals) were successful.

40 appeals were completed between April and June 2018, the latest date for which statistics have been published. Of these, 79% (30 appeals) were successful.

These figures include all PIP appeals; so they will contain appeals where claimants appealed for a higher PIP award as well as those appeals against a disallowance decision.

Figures have been rounded to the nearest 10.

Appeals data taken from the DWP PIP computer system’s management information. Therefore this appeal data may differ from that held by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service for various reasons such as delays in data recording and other methodological differences in collating and preparing statistics.

The Parliamentary Constituency geography relates to the origin of the claim (i.e. derived from claimant’s postcode) rather than the location of where the tribunal was.

Decisions overturned at appeal may include a number of appeals that have been lapsed (which is where DWP changed the decision after an appeal was lodged but before it was heard at Tribunal).

Since PIP was introduced 3.5m decisions have been made nationally up to June 2018, of these 9% have been appealed and 4% have been overturned.

Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) appeals

Information on appeal outcome by claim start date and Parliamentary Constituency is available on Stat-Xplore under “ESA Work Capability Assessments”.

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/

Guidance on how to use Stat-Xplore can be found here:

https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/index.html

Between April 2014 and March 2018, 3.5m ESA (post WCA) decisions have been made nationally, of these 8% have been appealed and 4% have been overturned.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) appeals -

In the Blaenau Gwent constituency, (i) 130 claimants were successful in appeals in 2017-18 and (ii) 30 claimants were successful in appeals between April and June 2018, the latest date for which statistics have been published. These figures include all PIP appeals; so they will contain appeals where claimants appealed for a higher PIP award as well as those appeals against a disallowance decision. Figures have been rounded to the nearest 10.

Appeals data taken from the DWP PIP computer system’s management information. Therefore this appeal data may differ from that held by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service for various reasons such as delays in data recording and other methodological differences in collating and preparing statistics.

The Parliamentary Constituency geography relates to the origin of the claim (i.e. derived from claimant’s postcode) rather than the location of where the tribunal was.

Decisions overturned at appeal may include a number of appeals that have been lapsed (which is where DWP changed the decision after an appeal was lodged but before it was heard at Tribunal).

Since PIP was introduced, 3.5m decisions have been made nationally up to June 2018. Of these, 9% have been appealed and 4% have been overturned.

Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) appeals -

Information on appeal outcome by claim start date and Parliamentary Constituency is

available on Stat-Xplore under “ESA Work Capability Assessments”.

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/

Guidance on how to use Stat-Xplore can be found here:

https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/index.html

Between April 2014 and March 2018, 3.5m ESA (post WCA) decisions have been made nationally, of these 8% have been appealed and 4% have been overturned.

Benefit claimants are not required to report their destination to Jobcentre Plus when they stop claiming benefit. However, as we roll out Universal Credit, we expect to be able to use Real Time Information (RTI) to track claimant outcomes.

Ofgem is considering options to protect vulnerable consumers and has yet to announce a formal proposal. Alongside this Ofgem has announced a package of measures to help consumers move away from poor value tariffs.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

Table 1 below shows the number of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) initial decisions and Mandatory Reconsideration decisions where the award was changed by year since the introduction of PIP in the Parliamentary Constituency of Blaenau Gwent.

Table 1 – Number of Initial decisions and Mandatory Reconsiderations decisions where the award changed by year of decision.

Tribunal Statistics, including appeal outcomes are published by the Ministry of Justice and so we will not be able to provide consistent regional breakdown of these statistics for Blaenau Gwent.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

National statistics on the number of children in relative low income are set out in the annual "Households Below Average Income" publication. The number and proportion of children in relative low income is not available at local authority or constituency level in this publication because the survey sample sizes are too small to support the production of robust estimates at this geography.

Latest 3-year estimates for Wales of the proportion of children in low income are available in Table 4.16ts in the file “4_children_timeseries_risk” from this link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/599136/hbai-2015-2016-supporting-ods-files.zip

The Ministry of Defence does not hold this information in the format requested.

Off- road bikers are vandalising the mountains above Blaenau Gwent. These troublemakers churn up the land, worry animals and intimidate local people.

I recognise the challenges involved in dealing with those who use bridle paths and footpaths inappropriately and ruin them for the majority of other people. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and both he and the police deserve credit for wanting to crack down on such practices. The use of drones is another good example of modern technology. Police forces and fire brigades are sharing them, and I would encourage the hon. Gentleman’s local police force to consider doing the same. It might be possible to make a bid through the police transformation fund.