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Incapacity Benefit
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement on the reform of incapacity benefit. [41504]
Margaret Hodge [holding answer 12 January 2006]: We will set out proposals for the reform of incapacity benefit in a Green Paper to be published later this month.
Pathways to Work
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Pathways to Work pilots in getting existing incapacity benefit claimants into work; and if he will make a statement. [41691]
Margaret Hodge: The early evidence from our pathways pilots is positive. Nearly 150,000 people have started on a pilot, including 11,200 existing claimants and there have been 19,500 job queries. As a result there has been an 8 percentage point increase in people leaving incapacity benefits after six months in pathways areas compared to the rest of the country.
Andrew Rosindell:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to the answer to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) of 12 December 2005, Official Report, column 1764W, on
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incapacity benefit, whether cost-benefit analysis has been carried out in relation to the Pathways to Work pilot scheme. [41692]
Margaret Hodge: The information requested is in Working Paper Incapacity Benefit Reforms—Pathways to Work Pilots performance and analysis" a copy of which has been placed in the Library.
The Pathways to Work districts are piloting new measures and innovative approaches to helping people with long-term illnesses or a disability to return to work. As pilot schemes, they are designed to test whether alternative approaches may be more effective than existing measures.
Early results show off-flows from incapacity benefit at six months of around 48 per cent. in the pilot areas compared with around 40 per cent. nationally, an improvement of 8 percentage points, resulting in a reduction in the incapacity benefit case load which more than pays for the additional costs of the pilots.
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to the answer to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) of 12 December 2005, Official Report, column 1764W, on incapacity benefit, what assessment he has made of the percentage of new incapacity benefit claimants eligible for mandatory entry into the Pathways to Work who entered jobs; and if he will make a statement. [41693]
Margaret Hodge: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) of 12 December 2005, Official Report, columns 1764–1765W.
Pension Credit
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of how much will be spent on the (a) guarantee credit and (b) savings credit, assuming income taken into account for pension credit purposes rises in line with (i) inflation, (ii) earnings and (iii) at a mid-point between earnings and prices and assuming (A) 80 per cent. take up of the guarantee credit and 50 per cent. take up of the savings credit, (B) 80 per cent. take up of the guarantee credit and 60 per cent. take up of the savings credit and (C) 100 per cent. take up of both guarantee and savings credit, in (1) 2005–06, (2) 2010–11, (3) 2020–21, (4) 2030–31, (5) 2040–41 and (6) 2050–51. [40485]
Mr. Timms: The information is not available in the form requested. Such information as is available is given in the table.
Projections of pension credit entitlement, and hence costs under alternative take-up scenarios, are not available at present, as they are dependent on National Statistics estimates of take-up; once these are available the projections will be updated. In addition, the cost of alternative levels of take-up, other than 100 per cent. also depends critically on the size of entitlements newly taken up under the alternative scenarios; it is not possible to estimate this realistically.
The table shows expenditure under the three scenarios where income brought to account for pension credit is
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uprated in line with (i) prices, (ii) average earnings, (iii) midway between earnings and prices. All scenarios effectively assume a constant overall take-up rate
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beyond 2007–08, the end of the current planning period, and are based on the continuation of the current uprating policy.
Notes:
1. Figures are for Great Britain. They are in 2005–06 prices and rounded to the nearest £100 million.
2. Pension credit projections assume the continuation of the current uprating of the guarantee element of pension credit by earnings, although the Government are not committed to this beyond 2008.
3. Projections of expenditure for pension credit in the future are based on a long-term version of the Department's policy simulation model, which uses Family Resources Survey data for 2003–04 projected forward into the future to estimate the extent of eligibility and average award for each pensioner household on the survey.
3. Expenditure figures for 2005–06 are consistent with the latest available forecasts from the pre-Budget report 2005.
Pensioners (Hendon)
Mr. Dismore: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many pensioners in Hendon have received (a) winter fuel payments, (b) winter fuel payments for over 80s, (c) council tax help and (d) extra living costs help for over 70s in 2005; and if he will make a statement. [41619]
Mr. Timms: Figures for this winter's payments are not yet available.
In winter 2004–05 there were 17,660 people in the Hendon constituency who received a winter fuel payment and of these 4,075 received the extra payment for those aged 80 or over. We expect the numbers to be similar for this winter.
We estimate that in the Hendon constituency around 11,000 people will receive the £200 aged related payment for help with council tax and around 2,500 people aged 70 or over will receive the £50 aged related payment to help with living expenses.
1. Actual figures for the number of winter fuel payments made are rounded to the nearest five, estimates for the council tax and living expenses payments are rounded to the nearest 500.
2. Local authorities and parliamentary constituencies are assigned by matching postcodes against the relevant ONS postcode directory.
Winter Fuel Payments
Chris Ruane: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) what the total amount of winter fuel payments to each constituency in the UK has been since the introduction of the payments; and what the overall total was in each year; [41632]
(2) how many people received winter fuel payments in each ward in each constituency in the UK in 2004–05, broken down by region; and what the value was of these payments in each case. [41633]
Mr. Timms [holding answer 12 January 2006]: The information requested is not available. Total expenditure on winter fuel payments in Great Britain, and total number of recipients in each year, are as follows:
Notes:
1 Figures are for Great Britain.
2 Expenditure figures are rounded to the nearest £ million and are given in cash prices.
3 Recipient figures are rounded to the nearest thousand.
4 Includes £100 over-80s payment from 2003–04.
Source:
DWP benefit expenditure tables, consistent with PER 2005. These can be found on the internet at http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd4/expenditure.asp
Breakdowns at constituency and ward level are available from 1999–2000. This information has been placed in the Library. For 2004–05, a comprehensive breakdown at these levels includes age-related payments for people aged 70 or over, which cannot be separated from winter fuel payments, so the total figure is higher than that given above for Great Britain.
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