§ Mr. KirkwoodTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the cost to his Department of the current advertisements to inform the public of their entitlement to family credit; what increase in applications has resulted from this; and how many additional staff have been employed to deal with this.
§ Mrs. Gillian ShephardThe cost of the current advertising campaign on television and in the press is £2.4 million. The campaign has not yet been running long enough for the full impact to be reflected in the level of claims. Overtime is being worked at the family credit unit, but otherwise, to date, only one additional member of the staff has been employed, to deal with the requests for claim forms prompted by the adverts.
§ Mr. KirkwoodTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will give figures for each of the last 12 months of the number of people on family credit who have not received a replacement claim book before their current one expired.
§ Mrs. Gillian ShephardFamily credit awards are for a fixed period of 26 weeks, and a fresh renewal claim has to be made for entitlement to continue when each period ends.
Information is not available as to the number of cases where the new award is not received before the expiry of the previous book.