§ Mr. Sillarsasked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) if he will publish a table showing, by region, his estimate of the percentage of the population in receipt of supplementary benefits;
(2) if he will publish a table showing the number of people in each United Kingdom region, and the number in each region in receipt of supplementary benefit; and if he will express the latter as a percentage of the total regional population.
§ Mr. OrmeThe poverty trap is a consequence not of poverty but of measures to relieve poverty. It is the name given to the situation in which someone receiving means-tested benefits may lose much of the advantage from a pay increase because extra pay leads to the payment of 651W more tax and the reduction or loss of the means-tested benefits.
The poverty trap is, however, more apparent than real: it occurs much less in practice than in theory. This is because its effects are moderated, if not avoided altogether, by (i) regular upratings of the benefits; (ii) the retention of key benefits such as family income supplement, once awarded, for twelve months, without any reassessment; and (iii) the fact that means-tested benefits are not reduced or lost simultaneously.
To give poor people equivalent help by non-means-tested benefits would be beyond the reach of the country's resources for a long time to come, since by definition such benefits would be payable to all, whether poor or not. Nevertheless, the Government have gone some way in that direction through the measures we have introduced for new and improved universal benefits, including earnings-related pensions, a whole range of new benefits for disabled people and child benefit for the mass of working families.