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Mr. Hutton: No, there will be no targets. We are not going to follow that approach. It would be disreputable to go about reforming incapacity benefit in that way, but we are not going to write off people who happen to be of a certain age. We must look carefully at the support that we provide for older people. In many parts of the country, although perhaps not in my hon. Friend's area, people are choosing to work longer, if possible. A modern, proper welfare state must provide employment support for people, irrespective of their age. However, we are not going after people in the way that my hon. Friend described—
Mr. Hutton: There will be no targets in the way that my hon. Friend suggested. I want to work with organisations, such as the training and employment providers, to give people on benefit the best possible help and support.
Paul Rowen (Rochdale) (LD): I welcome the statement that the Secretary of State has made, and he is right that unemployment, incapacity benefit claims and poverty occur in specific areas. He said that action would be taken on that: will he elaborate, and say what he has in mind?
Mr. Hutton: The Green Paper sets out the broad direction of travel that we intend to take, and already we have had some discussions with city leaders about what the proposal would look like. I want to mobilise resources outside the Department in this matter. I am looking to people in the private and voluntary sectors, and in local government and beyond, to put together a new approach to delivering welfare-to-work services in our big cities. We shall explore the details with city leaders over the next few weeks and months, and I hope to let the first contracts next year and begin the new way of delivering welfare.
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Points of Order
4.31 pm
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan) (SNP): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you had any indication that the Government will deliver a considered statement on today's massive job losses at Lexmark in Rosyth? For obvious and tragic reasons, the Dunfermline and West Fife constituency does not have an MP at the moment. Does not that make it all the more important for the Government to make a considered response to issues as substantial as the Lexmark redundancies—as opposed to the cursory, complacent and useless remarks made by the Secretary of State at Scottish questions earlier today?
Mr. Speaker: I am always concerned at any loss of jobs anywhere in the UK, but the hon. Gentleman will understand that this is not a matter for the Chair. However, hon. Members can put down parliamentary questions or ask for meetings with the Minister concerned. That is all that I can say on the matter.
John Robertson (Glasgow, North-West) (Lab): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek your guidance. Is it right for a Member of Parliament to use a point of order for blatant electioneering purposes, as the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) just did?
Mr. Speaker: Points of order are used for many purposes.
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Council Tax Benefit (Pensions Entitlement)
4.32 pm
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide that persons who own their own homes and are in receipt of State Pension should automatically receive Council Tax Benefit; to require local authorities to inform all such persons about their rights to Council Tax Benefit; and for connected purposes.
This Bill has all-party support. It is about an incredible Government IOU, and about giving money back to home-owning pensioners. It is not as though the Government do not want to give back the money involved, as they say that they have it and want to give it back. The people to whom it is owed—pensioners on pension credit—do not know that it is theirs or that it is owed to them, yet they are among the least able people in our communities to afford to lose out on it.
What is the problem? Specifically, it is the payment of council tax benefit, billions of pounds of which is going unclaimed. Pensioners deserve the benefits to which they are entitled and the tax relief to which they have contributed during their working lives.
The numbers are staggering. According to the most recent figures revealed by the Government, pensioners miss out each year on a cut to their council tax bill worth an average £426. Four pensioners out of 10 miss out on the total of £750 million in council tax benefit that goes unclaimed each year, and fewer than half of all home-owning pensioners claim the money that they should get. The money is like a lottery ticket that has fallen behind the sofa.
This weekend, there will be huge publicity for the EuroMillions lottery jackpot, in which the prize is more than £100 million. Many pensioners will probably buy a ticket, and the chances are that they will not win. Yet council tax benefit worth 750 times the value of the winning lottery ticket is unclaimed every week, every month, every year. Why? The money goes unclaimed because the onus is on pensioners to claim it. Yet most do not know they are owed it. The Government say that pensioners can call up the Department for Work and Pensions or visit it or go online. But why would they, if they do not know that they are owed almost £500 a year?
The onus should not be on pensioners to jump hurdles to make a claim. It should be the other way round. The Government should be obliged to make claiming as straightforward as possible to enable pensioners to claim the missing £750 million. If one owns one's own home, one qualifies, but there is no box on the council tax bill that one can tick. There should be. If one receives pension credit, one qualifies, but there is no box to tick on that paperwork for council tax relief. There should be. It is a scandal that some of the people who most need the Government's help are being left to second-guess the system. What makes it a scandal is not that the money is not there or that Ministers do not want to give it away, but simply that no one seems to agree on how it should be given back.
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Even if pensioners know that they can get the benefit, how easy is it to claim? It is not easy at all. My research assistant and I tried to work through the process. We Googled council tax benefit, and the BBC website came up, promising that I could
"download claim forms for some benefits, obtain leaflets, publications and other information, including details of your social security office"
by going to the DWP website. Well, I went, and I searched for council tax benefit. There were no results.
I went to the section for pensioners. Council tax is not even listed. I went back to the part on professionals and advisers on the Department's home page. I got tantalisingly close but sadly got only the "Adjudication and Operations Circulars for Council Tax Benefit", dating back to 2001. I finally found the form by using the A to Z index. There is no clear explanation of council tax relief for pensioners, and only one mention:
"Unless you are aged 60 or over and receive the guarantee credit of Pension Credit, savings over £16,000 usually mean you cannot get Council Tax Benefit."
That hardly screams out to pensioners to come and claim their tax relief.
The form is 40 pages long. It is not written in plain English. It asks about self-employment, dependants and savings, none of which is relevant or specific to pensioners and council tax benefit. It would be easier to keep buying the lottery tickets.
Yet, frustratingly, Ministers are convinced that the system is working and that there is no need for a tick-box. Why are they convinced of that? I have no idea, because what has happened since I first raised the issue in the House almost two years ago is that the amount going unclaimed has remained almost the same. When I questioned the Prime Minster about why half of home-owning pensioners are failing to get council tax relief, he said:
"Of course we support the principle of getting as many people as possible the benefits to which they are entitled, and we have made certain changes both to the forms that people have and in relation to the information campaign . . . of course we want to ensure that . . . people . . . actually get to them."—[Official Report, 8 December 2004; Vol. 428, c. 1168.]
That echoed the concerns of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in discussions with me when I proposed a private Member's Bill on the matter, which ran out of parliamentary time.
I fully accept that the Government are concerned, but their solution is unimaginative and uninspiring. In March 2004, Ministers undertook a publicity campaign, with flyers being sent to 20,000 organisations. It did not work. A year later when my private Member's Bill came to the House, the unclaimed council tax relief stood at £750 million. In response to my Bill, the then Secretary of State told me that adverts would be placed in the regional press calling on pensioners to claim. I did not see the adverts; I did not hear about the adverts. Clearly large numbers of pensioners never saw them.
Publicity campaigns alone often do not work. They are ad hoc. They are a scattergun approach to get people the help they need. A pensioner who does not read a particular newspaper one day or pick up a particular leaflet one week or listen to a particular radio programme one weekend is unlikely to get the benefit to which he or she is entitled. Yet that is what was
24 Jan 2006 : Column 1325
happening to 1.4 million pensioners every year after the second publicity campaign in response to my private Member's Bill. Just before Christmas, when I decided to reintroduce this Bill, BBC News online was reporting Age Concern as highlighting that 1.4 million eligible older people miss out on council tax benefit, resulting in up to £750 million remaining unclaimed each year. It said that the average amount unclaimed was £7.50 a week. Those are not my sums or even the charity's sums. Apparently they are based on conversations with Department for Work and Pensions officials and they are the DWP's figures. But Ministers persist in saying that they will pursue yet more publicity campaigns. Why? Again, I have no idea, because clearly publicity campaigns alone are not the answer.
What is more astonishing is the press release that the DWP put out when it did the first publicity campaign. It said:
"Some pensioners are missing out on a 100 per cent. refund because they are tearing up their Council Tax Bills."
What a crazy statement. When this hits the most vulnerable in our community hardest, it is the responsibility of Ministers to ensure that money owed to groups such as pensioners is given back. The money belongs to the pensioners; end of story. It is not the Chancellor's; it is not any Government Department's; it is not the local authorities'; it is the pensioners'. Pensioners should not have to fill out 40-page forms of irrelevant questions to get what is owed to them. It should just be given back. Pensioners paid the money in; now the Government should give it back.
The 40-page forms should be scrapped. At the most there should be a tick box on the council tax form or on the pension credit paperwork, not 40 pages of paperwork. It should not be the responsibility of local authorities to do this. They have not got the money; the Chancellor has. They did not take the money; the Chancellor did. Publicity campaigns are not working. Too much council tax relief is going unclaimed.
This is the second time that I have put this Bill before Parliament. This is the second time that I have received cross-party support for the Bill. This is the second time that I have been told by the Government that they are dealing with the problem when the problem remains. Enough is enough. It is time that Ministers ended the lottery of council tax benefit. Pensioners are entitled to this money. It cannot be beyond the wit of the Government to ensure that this huge sum of unclaimed council tax benefit goes to those who need it—pensioners who are entitled to it. I have pleasure in introducing the Bill.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Tony Baldry, Tom Brake, Mr. Alistair Carmichael, Dr. Hywel Francis, Mr. Jeremy Hunt, Mr. Boris Johnson, Grant Shapps, and Mr. Edward Vaizey.
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