§ Mr. Richard Wainwrightasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will update the answer given to the hon. Member for Colne Valley, Official Report, 28th July 1977, column 611, giving data for 1976 and 1977.
§ Miss Joan Lestorasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will update the answer given to the hon. Member, Official Report, 26th October, columns 755–60, giving data for 1976 and 1977.
§ Mr. OrmeThe table below gives the information requested for 1976. Estimates for 1977 are not yet available.
error. Estimates of those normally receiving supplementary benefit are derived from the annual special inquiry for 1976.
3. These estimates relate only to the population living in private households; families and persons in institutions are not sampled in the FES.
263W4. The supplementary benefit level is taken as being the supplementary benefit scale rate(s) appropriate, to the family. Income refers to net income less net housing costs less work expenses where appropriate.
5. The comparison is based on the family's normal income in the normal employment situation of the family head. For example, where the head of the family had been off work due to sickness or unemployment for less than three months at the time of the survey, the family's normal income when the head was at work was used in determining the level of income.
6. The estimates for numbers of families with income below the supplementary benefit level do not indicate unclaimed entitlement to supplementary benefit. For example those who are in full-time work or undertaking full-time further education would not normally have entitlement to supplementary benefit; for others not precluded from claiming, no regard is had in these estimates to factors such as disregarded income, treatment of capital or exceptional circumstances additions, each of which can affect payment of supplementary benefit.
7. Separate estimates of families with apparent unclaimed entitlement to supplementary benefit are now made annually. Those for 1975 were published in the annual report of the Supplementary Benefits Commission for 1976 (Cmnd. 6910): estimates for 1976 will be published in the Commission's report for 1977.
8. The 1976 estimates of families with incomes below the supplementary benefit level are directly comparable with those for 1975 and 1974 but not with those for 1972 or 1973. In earlier years it had been assumed that the income distribution of the self-employed was the same as for other employees. Self-employed sample records were included in the analysis in 1974 for the first time and this has been repeated in 1975 and 1976. The figures on the self-employed are especially liable to error because their incomes recorded in the FES tend to be particularly low in relation to their recorded expenditure. This discrepancy is partly due to the incomes of the self-employed being recorded in many cases for a much earlier period than that to which their expenditure relates and the data in the tables for 1975 and 1976 have been adjusted to take account of this.