§ Mr. MaclennanTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what information he has about the expected timetable for clearing the arrears of applications submitted for an allowance for lowered standard of occupation. [29013]
§ Mr. ArbuthnotThis is a matter for Mr. Peter Mathison, the chief executive of the War Pensions Agency. He will write to the hon. Member.
Letter from Peter Mathison to Mr. Robert Maclennan, dated 19 June 1995:
I am writing in reply to the Parliamentary Question that you raised concerning the clearance of arrears of applications for the Allowance for Lowered Standard of Occupation (ALSO).Some 982 cases were stockpiled pending legal advice on how legislation should be applied. Following that advice, we were obliged to change the way in which we dealt with certain claims for ALSO.We again began to process applications, under the new criteria, at the beginning of May and, as of this morning, 692 applications had been cleared. We expect to clear all but a small number of the remainder by the end of this month.The only cases remaining will be those where we have not yet fully established how the criteria should be applied but we expect to resolve the outstanding questions very shortly and for those cases not to be be delayed much longer.