§ Mr. Squireasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether, in the light of the fact that background information on the consultative document "Assistance with Housing Costs" is only available in the current month, he will extend the consultation period on the document and announce a new closing date for responses.
§ Mr. StanleyThe additional information requested by the local authority associations on the Government's proposals set out in the consultative document "Assistance with Housing Costs" has been sent to them today. Copies of this information have been placed in the Library and made available generally. Although the associations may not be able to submit comments on the document by 15 May as requested, I hope they will be able to do so by the end of this month.
Further checking and work on the estimates used to provide this additional further information on those who would lose and those who would gain if the Government's proposals were implemented show that minor corrections are needed to the tables of gainers and losers in Annex A, C and D of the consultative document.
The revised figures are:
Consultative Document, Annex A Supplementary Benefit: Revised Table 2D of claimants who switch to HB calculated according to income Those no worse off as a result of the change Those entitled to DHSS topping up payments (paragraph 10(e)) million million Local Authority Tenants 0.07 0.05 Private Tenants 0.03 0.02 Owner Occupiers 0.01 Negligible Note: Numbers may not total precisely due to rounding.
301W
Weekly amounts 1p–49p 50p–99p £1.00–£1.99 £2.00+ Total Owner occupiers, etc. 1,080 20 — — 1,100 Total 1,770 280 80 — 2,130 Gainers LA 140 80 140 60 400 Private tenants 30 20 30 * 90 Owner occupiers, etc. 210 130 — — 340 Total 380 220 170 60 830 Notes:
(1) The total number of rebate recipients at present is about 3.1 million rate rebate recipients plus about 0.1 million tenants who are eligible for rent rebate only, making 3.2 million in all. In order to derive this figure from the table it is necessary to aggregate gainers, losers, and those who break even (see note 2), and deduct about 40,000 householders who would be newly entitled to rebates.
(2) The table excludes 300,000 beneficiaries whose entitlement would not be affected by the reform.
(3) About 220,000 present beneficiaries would lose entitlement entirely.
(4) * indicates that the samples are too small to allow a reasonable estimate; indicates no households.
(5) Sub-totals do not necessarily add to totals because of rounding.
Consultative Document: Annex D Supplementary Benefit Recipients: Revised Table 1 of gainers and losers on introduction of proposed reform Table 1 Weekly Amounts £ Losers Gainers 0.01–0.99 40 69 1.00–1.99 22 27 2.00+ 12 17 Total 74 113 Based on an analysis of the annual sample survey of supplementary benefit claimants.