§ Mr. Andrew TurnerTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many persons were entitled to receive each benefit and tax credit at the most recent date1056W for which information is available; and how many had (a) become entitled and (b) ceased to be entitled, in the preceding 12 months. [35217]
§ Malcolm Wicks[holding answer 11 June 2002]: We aim to ensure that people are in an informed position to make choices on whether to claim benefit and we are the first Government to encourage the active pursuit of take-up initiatives as a means of tackling pensioner poverty. On 30 May 2000 we launched the minimum income guarantee (MIG) take-up campaign and this resulted in a further 127,371 successful MIG claims.
The available information on benefit take-up is published in the Income-Related Benefits Estimates of Take-Up in 1999–2000, a copy of which is available in the Library. Tax credits are the responsibility of the Inland Revenue.
Information on the number of people receiving social security benefits is available in the Library in the following publications:
Attendance Allowance and Disability Living Allowance—Disability, Care and Mobility Benefits Quarterly Statistical Enquiry, August 2001;Income Support—Income Support Quarterly Statistical Enquiry, November 2001; Jobseeker's Allowance; Jobseeker's Allowance Quarterly Statistical Enquiry, November 2001.Incapacity Benefit/Severe Disablement Allowance—Incapacity Benefit and Severe Disablement Allowance Quarterly Summary Statistics November 2001;Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefit—Housing Benefit & Council Tax Benefit Quarterly Summary Statistics for November 2001; andRetirement Pension—Retirement Pension Summary of Statistics, September 2001.The available information on the number of people who have stopped and started receiving social security benefits has been placed in the Library. In addition, this table gives the number of people receiving bereavement benefits, child benefit, guardians allowance, industrial injuries disablement benefit, invalid care allowance, maternity allowance and reduced earnings allowance.