Supplementary Benefits: Heating Addition (Hansard, 27 June 1984)

§ Baroness Lane-Fox
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Glenarthur)
My Lords, supplementary benefit rates are intended to pay for all day-to-day expenses, including fuel. In addition, heating additions are given to those supplementary benefit claimants who need to spend extra on fuel because of frailty, illness, disability, or because their homes are hard to heat. The Government spent about £380 million on heating additions in 1983–84—about £130 million more in real terms than the £124 million spent in 1978–79.

§ Baroness Lane-Fox
My Lords, in thanking my noble friend the Minister for his very full and helpful reply, may I ask him to illustrate how much the least well off are benefiting from this addition by stating what proportion of those who receive it are supplementary pensioners?

§ Lord Glenarthur
My Lords, the proportion of supplementary pensioners with heating additions has gone up from about 70 per cent. in 1978 to about 90 per cent. in 1982, and the proportion of unemployed people with heating additions has gone up from about 913 15 per cent. to about 30 per cent. These increases are probably largely due to the introduction of automatic heating additions for householders whose family includes someone over 70 or someone under five years of age. The extension of automatic heating additions to those over 65 will further increase the proportion of supplementary pensioners with heating additions.

§ Lord Stallard
My Lords, will the Minister accept that any assistance is welcome; but, knowing how he likes to be fair and not selective, may I remind him of how his Government have deliberately increased fuel costs in the same period by the continued imposition of the fuel tax? Is he further aware that, according to a report in the Guardian of 23rd June, pensioners on supplementary benefit, already in receipt of heating additions, will lose up to £1 per week from November this year?

§ Lord Glenarthur
My Lords, the question of the charges made by companies such as the electricity boards and the gas hoards for the provision of their services is something which has been discussed in your Lordships' House on several occasions at Question Time. and the case has been made perfectly clearly for the increases which were made by them. In regard to the article in the Guardian, I think the noble Lord may be referring to the available scale margin. That of course is being increased, as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State announced last week, and there are perfectly sound reasons for doing so.

§ Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, are there not two additional means by which the Government can help the least well off—and indeed the rest of us—in relation to fuel prices? First of all, can the noble Lord give an assurance that the Government will not intervene next year to artificially increase the price of electricity, and perhaps gas? Secondly, will he prevail upon Her Majesty's Government to settle the miners' strike, which is costing so much in the use of extra oil, by setting up a court of inquiry to examine the industry?

§ Lord Glenarthur
My Lords, with respect, both those questions are different questions and they go wide of the Question on the Order Paper.

§ Lord George-Brown
My Lords, I apologise slightly for moving my position, but I was listening with interest to the Minister. I understood him to say that the case for the boards increasing their charges—that is to say, the gas and electricity boards—had been made clearly. But is he not misleading the House? Is it not true that the chairman of each board has made it plain that the last thing on earth he or his board wanted to do was to increase their charges, because it was unjustified, and that in fact they were required by the Government to place what was a hidden tax upon the charges for gas and electricity?

§ The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw)
My Lords, with all respect to the noble Lord, he has had his say, but I think he must know that it has absolutely nothing to do with the Question that was asked.

§ Lord George-Brown
My Lords, I beg the noble Viscount's pardon. With great respect, it has everything to do with it, because the Minister said it. All I am doing is asking the Minister to justify a statement, which I would have said is clearly not true, by reference to the statements made by the chairmen of the boards. With great respect to the noble Viscount, how can that be not relevant, since the Minister is denying what in fact was said?

§ Viscount Whitelaw
My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord, I appreciate what he says, and I did not wish to be unreasonable. But I think the question he is posing should be addressed to the Energy Department and not to the Department of Health and Social Security. If he wishes to put down a Question of that sort, it will be answered in the normal way by the Government.

§ Lord George-Brown
My Lords, I shall do so.

Lord Winstanley
My Lords, can the noble Lord confirm that that part of the code of practice governing the cutting off of electricity supplies to people in arrears of payment, that part of the code which covers elderly people living alone who should have been in receipt of heating benefits but were not receiving them, will not be put into operation until that business has been sorted out?

§ Lord Glenarthur
My Lords, it is for the fuel industries themselves to decide, within their code of practice, whether or not to disconnect a debtor's supply. and we have no power to intervene in individual cases.

§ Baroness Lane-Fox
My Lords, may I ask my noble friend the Minister whether he could compare, in real terms, the rates of supplementary benefit today with those in 1978-79, since we are on the question of trying to plan for the future against hypothermia?

§ Lord Glenarthur
Yes, my Lords. Between November 1978 and November 1983 the rates of supplementary benefit were increased in value by 5 per cent. in real terms, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State announced in another place on 18th June that the rates will be increased in November in line with the rise in the retail price index, less housing costs. In comparison, under the last Administration of the party opposite, no real increase in these rates occurred.