§ Mr. Gordon Brownasked the Secretary of State for Social Services on what take-up rate his figures for beneficiaries from family credit are based.
§ Mr. NewtonI refer the hon. Member to paragraph 2.10 of the technical annex to the White Paper "Reform of Social Security" (Cmnd. 9691).
§ Mr. Gordon Brownasked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) if he will estimate, on the basis of a 50 per cent. take-up of family credit, the numbers of families who will gain and who will lose as a result of his new proposals for family credit;
(2)if he will recalculate and publish in the form of table 16B of the technical appendix of his White Paper the numbers of gainers and losers from changes in income-related benefits after making allowance for future child benefit payments (a) at their present rate, (b) rising in line with inflation and (c) rising by only 1 per cent. a year;
(3)if he will publish a table showing the total number of gainers and losers from his social security reviews after taking account of both his proposed changes in supplementary benefit, housing benefit and family income supplement and a policy for raising child benefit at a rate lower than price rises.
436W
§ Mr. NewtonThe technical annex to the White Paper gives a very substantial amount of information to illustrate the proposed changes in income-related benefits. In the Government's view it would not be a sensible use of the considerable computer and manpower resources involved to produce comparable information in respect of every possible variation of the assumptions on which they are based.