Benefit Recipients (Hansard, 19 March 1997)

§ Mr. Roger Evans

The figures in my written answer to the hon. Member for Bristol, East (Ms Corston) on 12 February,Official Report, columns 247–48, were based on the housing benefit management information system annual 1 per cent. sample. This database consists of detailed records of approximately one in every 100 recipients of housing benefit, council tax benefit or both. This information is supplied by the local authorities responsible for the administration and payment of these benefits. The records include details of amounts of housing benefit and council tax benefit being received, eligible council tax, details of other benefits being received by the claimant or partner and details of any dependants and non-dependants.

No particular assumptions were therefore made in producing figures for the number of recipients of council tax benefit and retirement pension or the number of recipients of council tax benefit, retirement pension and income support.

To provide an estimate for recipients of council tax benefit and retirement pension eligible for but not claiming income support, information on the relevant database records was used to calculate whether council tax benefit, after adding back in any deductions for non-dependants, is equal to eligible council tax. This then indicates whether the recipient has income less than his applicable amount—the total of personal allowances and premiums—and therefore whether they would be eligible for income support. Differences in council tax benefit and income support rules relating to earnings disregards and capital amounts have been taken into account in this calculation.

The only assumptions made are that:

1.Recipients of council tax benefit and retirement pension, who are not already claiming income support, but receive either war disablement or war widow's pension and have council tax benefit equal to eligible council tax, will not be entitled to income support. This is due to the differences between how income from war disablement or war widow's pension is disregarded for council tax benefit and income support. Analysis of the cases where council tax benefit is equal to eligible council tax, which would total around 16,000, indicates that the vast majority would be unlikely to qualify for income support due to these differences and the relatively large amounts of war disablement or war widow's pension paid in addition to retirement pension. The effect of this assumption, if any, would be slightly to underestimate the number of entitled non-recipients of income support.

2.The number of special cases where a non-dependant deduction would not be applied and which cannot be identified from the information on the database, is relatively small. In these cases, it has been assumed that a non-dependant deduction has been made and so this deduction has been added back in the calculation 676W described above. The effect will be slightly to overestimate the number of entitled non-recipients of income support.

3. The effects of any other minor differences between the entitlement rules of council tax benefit and income support are small.

Due to the possible effects of these assumptions, the estimated figure was rounded to the nearest 10,000.

The 95 per cent. confidence limits are as follows, and do not take into account the effect of the assumptions described above:

	Number (000s)	Approximate 95 per cent. confidence interval
Recipients of council tax benefit and retirement pension	2,431	2,411 to 2,451
Estimated recipients of council tax benefit and retirement pension, eligible for but not claiming income support	260	250 to 270