§ Mr. Pardoeasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what proportion of claims for family income supplement has been refused by his Department, returned to the applicant due to inadequate answers on the official form, or abandoned by the applicant after his Department had required further personal details of the applicant or of his family.
§ Mr. DeanThe proportion of claims for family income supplement which have been rejected is 48 per cent. The reason for returning a claim form is usually because a signature has been omitted; no record is kept of the number of these. Claimants are asked for additional information in more than half of the claims. In well over half of these cases the information required is a statement of earnings from the employer. The proportion of claims assumed to be abandoned because the claimants do not provide information asked for is just under 5 per cent.
262W
§ Sir K. JosephThe recruitment of staff to meet requirements is a matter for the individual hospital authorities subject to any special approval required from the regional hospital hoard or my Department: there has been general expansion in recent years; on 30th September, 1970, there were in the Newcastle Region, in whole-time equivalents, 440 hospital doctors, including 176 consultants, per million population: the corresponding figures for England and Wales were 461 and 165.
Proportionately the number of patients awaiting admission to hospital in the Newcastle Regional Hospital Area is less than the average for England. Comparative figures for waiting lists in the major specialties in relation to population and to discharges from hospitals are as follows: