Pension Books (Hansard, 2 February 1994)

§ Mr. Hague

The administration of benefit payments is a matter for Mr. Michael Bichard, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member.

Letter from Michael Bichard to Mr. Jim Cunningham, dated 1 February 1994: The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to respond to your recent Parliamentary Question about the wording on the cover of the new Pension Books. Firstly, it may be helpful if I explain that the design of the cover of order books is constant across all types of social security benefit, as was the case with old style order books. The reason for this is that the cover does not automatically identify which type of benefit a person is receiving, so that a casual observer cannot identify which social security benefit an individual is in receipt of simply by looking at the cover of an order book. This allows an individual's financial affairs to remain confidential. There are also practical considerations if separate covers were required for individual benefits. Perhaps the most significant would be at the printing and assembly stage. Print runs would have to be stopped to allow different covers to be loaded to reflect the type of benefit being paid which would mean additional cost implications. Consideration would also have to be given as to how a book containing a number of benefits combined would be reflected on a cover—order books are issued by benefit groups and a number of different benefits are within each group. This would only add to the difficulty in identifying which cover should be assembled to the foils. The design of the order book is constantly under review, and the cover design is a component of many considerations. The last change was introduced primarily as an anti-fraud measure and it may interest you to learn that since the introduction of the new design no counterfeits have been found to be cashed. This is a

Housing benefit cases by region
	1988–89	1989–90	1990–91	1991–92	1992–93
South East (excluding London)	473,100	465,000	490,200	533,700	590,800
London	553,100	523,800	553,700	594,800	640,100
North (including Cumbria)	308,900	302,100	296,800	297,500	294,200
Wales	205,000	204,000	204,000	210,000	235,000
Scotland	565,000	557,000	542,000	541,000	624,200
Yorkshire and Humberside	402,300	391,400	388,200	398,100	388,500
East Midlands	237,300	232,300	241,800	247,500	265,800
East Anglia	111,400	105,100	111,800	118,000	129,900
South West	233,300	234,000	248,400	267,600	288,000
West Midlands	383,800	361,400	368,800	387,800	386,500
North West (excluding Cumbria)	524,400	507,200	514,400	522,600	526,400
Total	3,997,600	3,883,300	3,960,100	4,118,600	4,369,500

Source:

The Housing Benefit Management Information System quartely caseload data.

Notes:

1. Information prior to 1988–89 is not available.
2. The data relates to Great Britain; figures for the United Kingdom are not available.
3. The figures are averages, rounded to the nearest 100, and include estimates for non-responding authorities.
4. The numbers are in benefit units, a benefit unit may be a couple or a single person.
5. The data is from a later source than that used for "Social Security Statistics".

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major achievement which should result in significant savings by reducing order book fraud. It is, however, too early to estimate how great these savings will be. For the reasons stated above there are no plans to replace the term Social Security with that of Pension. I hope you find this reply helpful.