§ 12. Mr. HarrisTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security whether he will be increasing the social fund allocation per head of eligible claimants.
§ Mr. Peter LloydWhen the social fund allocations for 1988–89 were announced in November 1987, the average allocation per head of supplementary benefit caseload was £39. The latest available figures show that the 1989–90 social fund allocation represents £46 per head of income support caseload.
§ Mr. HarrisIs the take-up for the social fund on target? I welcome the figures, but will my hon. Friend take it from me that in my constituency all the scaremongering that we heard about this fund seems to have been completely unfounded?
§ Mr. LloydI am pleased to hear what my hon. Friend says about his local office. I can give him the figures for January, which show that there has been a welcome increase in successful applications. In January, the loans budget was 96 per cent. of profile, and the expenditure of the grants was 109 per cent.
§ Mr. AllenWill the Minister accept that the social fund as a whole will be grossly underspent by the end of the financial year, largely because he and his colleagues have set the criteria far too high for local offices? Will the Minister be amending the criteria so that all of the social fund can be spent on the needy in Nottingham and elsewhere?
§ Mr. LloydThe criteria in January, when expenditure was up against the profile, were the same in almost all respects as they were when the social fund started. We have kept the budget for the coming year as it was last year, despite the underspend in the early part of the current year. 593 That shows that we have great faith that the rules as they are will enable the expenditure that we have seen in January to be continued and to be directed to those most especially in need, as is the object of the social fund.
§ Mr. Brandon-BravoWill my hon. Friend explain why there is such an extraordinary variation between one social fund office and another in almost identical areas? The three offices in Nottingham, for example, serve similar areas, but there are substantial variations in the per capita provision. Perhaps my hon. Friend will explain why that is so.
§ Mr. Campbell-SavoursNo, he is talking about payments.
§ Mr. LloydWell, provision was based very much on the pattern of single payments under supplementary benefit. The differences between offices reflect a series of factors, including the difference in the income support case load, the nature of the area, the attitudes of local voluntary and statutory groups and the efforts made by the local offices to ensure that the availability of the grants and loans is widely known.