§ Mr. Gordon Wilsonasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if, pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Dundee, East on 31 March 1981, Official Report, c. 70, he will give an official response to the report from the Scottish electricity consumers' council which advocated that special attention should be paid to the colder climatic conditions in Scotland when assessing the levels of heating allowances.
§ Mr. NewtonI am satisfied that the existing arrangements for providing help with fuel costs to those on supplementary benefit represent a fair method of distributing available resoureces and I have no plans to single out climatic or other local factors as a basis for determining differential levels of heating additions. To do so would introduce considerable extra complexity into the scheme. Heating additions are intended to provide for extra resources for heating to those who need it because of their age, their state of health, the condition of their accommodation, or their type of heating system. They are not intended to meet precisely the different heating costs of individual households which vary according to personal preference and many other circumstances of which climatic conditions is only one. Help is also available by way of single payments where exceptionally severe weather results in increased consumption.