§ Mr. Rookerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what are the administrative obstacles to a twice-yearly uprating of social security benefits; and what the estimated cost of overcoming these obstacles would be.
§ Mr. RossiThe main administrative obstacle to a twice yearly uprating of social security benefits is the time taken to examine and re-assess individually some 3½ million supplementary benefit cases. This has to be done clerically, within existing staff complements in addition to normal work. As most supplementary benefit payments 35W are made by order books lasting 26 weeks, and each case is reviewed once every 26 weeks, the most economical way of implementing uprating increases is to include them in order books as cases come up for review in the normal way. This keeps to a minimum the extra staff time required for the uprating. The extra cost of uprating twice yearly would be made up of additional staff and other administrative costs. These would amount to about £6 million a year.