§ Mr. Frank FieldTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many liable relatives were paying maintenance contributions to claimants on supplementary benefit and income support for each year since 1972; and what percentage these figures are of the number of claimants with children for whom liable relative payments could be made in those years.
§ Mr. BurtThe information is not available in the form requested for years prior to 1991, when the statistics collected related to the number of cases where a maintenance liability was established rather than those where payment was actually made.
324WThe information for 1991 and 1992 is in the table. The figures represent the number of cases receiving payments. It is possible that some cases may receive payments from more than one liable relative.
1991 1992 Number of total LR cases with dependent children 680,000 948,000 Number of cases where maintenance was paid 194,000 207,000 Percentage of cases where payment was made 28.5 21.9 The higher number of total cases in 1992 is likely to be due mainly to new procedures which enabled more reliable identification of cases in which there might be a liability to maintain. The figure of 680,000 for 1991 may therefore be an underestimate of the real number.
Source: Annual Statistical Inquiry.