§ Baroness Jegerasked Her Majesty's Government:
Why, particularly in view of the changes in housing benefit, the cost of housing is excluded from the pensioners' cost of living index.
§ The Secretary of State for Trade and Indsutry (Lord Young of Graffham)The construction of the pensioner price indices follows the recommendations of the Retail Prices Index Advisory Committee, which reported in 1968 that housing costs should be excluded because the available price indicators (compiled for purposes of the general index of retail prices) were not appropriate for pensioners. That remains true. The committee also noted that there were both conceptual and practical difficulties in compiling a meaningful index of changes in housing costs for pensioner households. These difficulties remain.