§ Mr. Simon HughesTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what arrangements exist for reimbursing local authorities for the cost of operating the statutory £10 disregard of war widows' pensions and war disablement pensions when assessing eligibility for council tax and housing benefit; and what was the overall amounts paid to local authorities for such purposes in each of the last five years. [13599]
§ Mr. HealdCentral Government funding for the administration costs of operating the housing benefit and council tax benefit schemes, as distinct from subsidy paid in respect of benefit payments, is made to local authorities by the Department of the Environment, via the revenue support grant, and by direct grant from the Department of Social Security.
Neither payment is sub-divided by reference to individual aspects of these schemes.
§ Mr. Chris SmithTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many of the claims for reinstatement of widows' pension by widows' who remarried but whose subsequent marriage ended have been processed; what percentage of the total this represents; how long it has taken on average to process each claim; and what steps he is taking to expedite such claims. [14045]
§ Mr. HealdThese are matters for Kevin Caldwell, the chief executive of the War Pensions Agency. He will write to the hon. Member.
Letter from K. C. Caldwell to Mr. Chris Smith, dated 13 February 1996:
The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about restored War Widows Pension.As at 2 February 1996, 12430 claims have been received of which 7394 have been notified of an award and had payment arranged, and 85 have had their claim rejected. Thus, 60 per cent. of the total claims received have bee processed.I do not have a ready means of calculating precisely the average clearance times. But I can tell you that the first formal claims for a restored widows pension began to be received in August and we were able to start notifying widows of the result from 22 September, by which time we had received 8282 claims. We are now notifying and arranging payment in claims which were made in September.We have recently been able to increase the staff working on this exercise and now have the capacity to notify up to 1000 widows a week of the result of their claim.This will enable us to ensure that by the end of March 90 per cent of claimants will be notified of the result of their claims within 4 weeks of having made a claim.I hope this is helpful.