§ Mr. Fieldasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish the size of the social security budget; if he will present those data as an average yearly payment to (a) claimants and (b) spread out over the entire population.
§ Mr. PrenticeSpending on social security benefits in 1979–80 is provisionally estimated to be some £17,440 million. As a claimant may at any one time330W be in receipt of a number of benefits, for example an unemployed parent would be in receipt of child benefit, unemployment benefit and possibly supplementary allowances, it is not possible to give a meaningful average yearly total payment per beneficiary. An indication of the numbers in receipt of certain benefits on a given day can be gained from table 4 on page 12 of the DHSS annual report 1977, Cmnd. 7394. Average expenditure per head of population in 1979–80 will be about £320.