Government’s Covid-19 response has seen it ‘scrambling’ to reverse the cuts to DWP staff numbers made over the past 10 years

By the time the pandemic struck, DWP staff numbers were almost 30 per cent down, former Shadow Work and Pensions Minister highlights

The government's Covid-19 response has seen it 'scrambling' to reverse the cuts to DWP staff numbers made over the past 10 years, a former Shadow Work and Pensions Minister has said.

Introducing a Commons debate yesterday on the operation of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) during the Covid-19 outbreak, Shadow SNP Spokesperson for Disabilities Marion Fellows said -

'The whole of the Department for Work and Pensions has been under pressure during the pandemic, and staff have been working under incredible pressure to ensure that benefits are paid as quickly as possible. DWP staff have been rightly congratulated for what they have done, but the situation has affected the service from the CMS, which was failing many families even before Covid-19 struck and staff were redeployed to help with universal credit and jobseeker’s allowance.'

Contributing to the debate, former Shadow Work and Pensions Minister and former member of the Work and Pensions Committee Karen Buck highlighted that, according to the National Audit Office (NAO), in 2011/2012 the DWP employed 100,250 people on a full-time equivalent basis, but that -

'By the time the pandemic struck, the government had cut DWP staff numbers by 28% to 72,186. The government now find themselves scrambling to reverse the cuts to staff numbers that they made over the past 10 years, with 7,000 new recruits between April and August and a further 17,000 planned by March.'

NB - the figures are drawn from a Departmental overview published by the NAO in October 2020 that also highlighted that the DWP -

• redeployed around 10,000 staff at different points during its initial response to the pandemic, moving them from policy, back-office roles and other benefits and services into new claim handling roles to maximise its jobcentre and service centre capacity; and
• paused most of its change activity, analytical research, fraud investigation and debt recovery to transfer staff to process and check new claims, and also reduced its capacity in areas such as appeals, pensions and child maintenance.

Responding to the points raised during the debate, Work and Pensions Minister Guy Opperman said -

'... of course covid has had a significant impact. In March last year, the Department, along with much of government, had to respond to an unprecedented situation; that meant working quickly to prioritise services and support for those who would be impacted by the particulars of the pandemic. As a result, we mobilised our frontline welfare system like never before with an injection of more than £7 billion into our welfare safety net and over 3 million more people claiming support through universal credit. To assist that, 1,500 CMS staff were redeployed to support the increase in the universal credit workload. I wish to put on record my thanks and the thanks of the Secretary of State to all the staff in the CMS and across the DWP who have worked so hard and so flexibly during the pandemic itself.'

NB - Mr Opperman added that, by the end of September 2021, nearly 1,150 CMS staff had returned from the redeployment across the Department.

The Commons debate on Covid-19: Child Maintenance Service is available from Hansard.