55. Mr. R. C. Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the total expenditure by the Supplementary Benefits Commission on special heating allowances during 1971.
§ Mr. DeanI regret that this information is not available. Special additions for heating are part of exceptional circumstances additions taken into account by the commission in assessing a person's requirements for supplementary benefit purposes, and it is not practicable to identify that part of expenditure on exceptional circumstances additions which is attributable to extra heating.
At November, 1971, 194,000 recipients of supplementary benefits had exceptional circumstances additions which included provision for extra heating, of whom 159,000 were supplementary pensioners.