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20 May 2004 : Column 1168W—continued

WORK AND PENSIONS

Benefit Claimants (Over-50s)

Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what proportion of incapacity benefit claimants aged between 50 and state pension age have claimed for (a) more than one year, (b) more than five years and (c) more than 10 years, broken down by gender; and if he will make a statement. [172541]

 
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Maria Eagle: The information is in the table.
Number of incapacity benefit (IB) and severe disablement allowance (SDA) claimants between the ages of 50 and state pension age, by gender and claim duration as at November 2003 Thousand

	Men		Women
Duration of claim	Aged 50 to 64	Percentage	Aged 50 to 59	Percentage
All	804.1	100	451.7	100
Up to 1 year	86.9	11	50.0	11
From 1 to 5 years	235.6	29	135.3	30
From 5 to 10 years	353.6	44	196	43
Over 10 years	128.0	16	70.4	16

Notes:
1. Numbers are rounded to the nearest hundred and are expressed in thousands.
2. Totals may not sum due to rounding.
3. Numbers are based on a 5 per cent. sample, and are therefore subject to a degree of sampling variation.
Source:
IAD Information Centre 5 per cent. sample.

Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many and what proportion of people between the age of 50 and state pension age claimed (a) sickness and (b) disability benefits in each year since 1997, broken down by gender; and if he will make a statement. [172542]

Maria Eagle: The information has been placed in the Library.

Child Support Agency

Tony Lloyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when existing Child Support Agency cases will be transferred to the new scheme; and if he will make a statement. [174279]

Mr. Pond: I refer my hon. Friend to the written answer I gave the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) on 18 December 2003, Official Report, column 1092W.

Council Housing

Mr. Austin Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the cumulative extra cost to the social security budget of the transfer of council housing to registered social landlords has been in each year since 1997. [172275]

Mr. Pond: The information is not available. To determine such a figure would require detailed assumptions about the rents each authority might theoretically have charged had it retained the stock. However, the potential impact on housing benefit where stock is transferred to registered social landlords is considered as part of the overall value-for-money assessment of transfers.

Departmental Annual Report

Mr. Willetts: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the cost of his Department's annual report has been in each of the last seven years. [172918]

 
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Maria Eagle: The Department for Work and Pensions has published three Departmental Reports since it was established in June 2001. The costs falling directly to the Department for production of these reports are shown in the table.

Other costs of printing and publication are met directly by the publisher, TSO (The Stationery Office) and do not fall to government.

Date of publication	Cost to Department for Work and Pensions (£)
May 2002	94,940
May 2003	73,089
April 2004	38,897

Departmental Policies (Sustainable Development)

Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) what work his Department's Green Minister has undertaken in his capacity in the last three months; [165665]

(2) what meetings his Department's Green Minister has attended in his capacity in the last 12 months; [165668]

(3) if he will list the meetings at which a representative of his Department had been present regarding the delivery of sustainable development across Government as co-ordinated by the Ministerial Sub-committee of Green Ministers. [165667]

Mr. Pond: The Green Minister for the Department for Work and Pensions is my noble Friend Baroness Hollis of Heigham, but it has been established practice under successive Governments not to disclose information relating to the proceedings of Cabinet Committees. This practice is now formalised by Exemption 2 of Part II of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. Additionally, officials regularly attend the working groups which report directly to ENV(G), particularly related to the Development of the Framework for Sustainable Development on the Government Estate.

Departmental Procurement

Michael Fabricant: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what percentage of the (a) crockery, (b) cutlery and (c) glassware procured by his Department over the last five years is of British manufacture. [170808]

Jane Kennedy: This Department does not procure the items specified for its staff canteens or catering facilities because these services are delivered by our contractor for the provision of estate and property services. Information on the country of manufacture of these items procured for other purposes is not collected centrally.

Employers' Insurance

Mr. Best: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment he has made of representations from the Association of British Insurers
 
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on matters relating to employers' liability compulsory insurance; and whether he has taken steps to confirm their accuracy. [169401]

Jane Kennedy: The Association of British Insurers (ABI) represents many of the major underwriters of employers' liability compulsory insurance (ELCI) and the Department worked closely with the association in the recent review of ELCI. However, we draw information from a wide range of other sources, such as Lloyd's of London, and Datamonitor, and work closely with a range of other key representative organisations such as the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL), the British Insurance Brokers' Association (BIBA), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF), the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

The formal response of the ABI to the review of ELCI was one of 86 received by the review team.

John Thurso: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many personal injury claims were made to general insurers in specific relation to employers' liability in each of the last five years, broken down by region; and what the total value of all costs and claims in relation to such claims was, broken down by region. [174048]

Jane Kennedy: Figures for the number of personal injury claims in relation to Employers' Liability for 1999–2000 are not available. Figures for the number of personal injury claims in relation to Employers' Liability for 2001 to 2003 are in the table.

	Number
2001	219,183
2002	170,554
2003	183,342

Source:
Compensation Recovery Unit.

A regional breakdown of the figures would be available only at disproportionate cost. Separate figures for just the total value of costs and just the total value of settlements are not available. However the total value of costs and claims combined for 1999–2002 are shown in the table.

	£ million
1999	468
2000	427
2001	639
2002	926

Note:
Figures are not yet available for 2003.
A regional breakdown of the figures is not available.
Source:
Association of British Insurers.

It is important to note that because of the long tail nature of certain claims, settlements may accrue for many years to come. The figures in the table only relate to the value of claims thus far settled in each of those years.
 
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Pensioner Income

Mr. Edward Davey: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many pensioners entitled to council tax benefit were non-recipients in the financial years (a) 2002–03 and (b) 2003–04; and how much the unclaimed benefit amounted to in each year. [172883]

Mr. Pond: The information requested is not available.

Latest estimates of the number of pensioners who are entitled to but not receiving council tax benefit and the amount of benefit unclaimed relate to financial year 2001–02. These are published in the DWP report: "Income Related Benefits Estimates of Take-Up in 2001/2002"; copies of the publication can be found in the Library. DWP statisticians will announce the publication date of the next set of statistics in 'Updates'—the bulletin of National Statistics releases.

Local authorities have a statutory duty to promote awareness of council tax benefit. To support them in this I launched a national campaign on 1 March 2004 to particularly encourage pensioners to claim council tax benefit.

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