Winter Fuel Payments (Hansard, 22 April 1998)

§ Mr. Denham

Winter Fuel payments are one of a number of initiatives the Government have taken to help vulnerable people, especially the elderly, keep warm in winter. A total of £400 million has been committed for two years (1997–98 and 1998–99), to help pensioners with fuel bills to pay. This is the first time any Government have provided additional help with heating costs to all pensioners living in the United Kingdom who receive a retirement pension or one of a number of other qualifying benefits.

The making of this year's payments has been an enormous and unprecedented exercise. In order to establish all eligible pensioners, correctly identify pensioner households, and determine the amount each should receive, it was necessary to correlate data in around 15 million computer records, involving 15 qualifying benefits, across nine computer systems. Overall, almost 10 million pensioners, in over 7 million households, have received a payment.

The administration of winter fuel payments is a matter for Peter Mathison, the Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to my hon. Friend.

642W

Letter from Peter Mathison to Mr. Bill Etherington, dated 21 April 1998: The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking how many pensioners in Sunderland received (a) £50, (b) £20 and (c) £10 winter fuel payments in the last year for which figures are available. The making of winter fuel payments to almost ten million eligible pensioners, in over seven million households, before the end of March 1998 has been a challenging task for the Benefits Agency (BA). This will have been achieved whilst maintaining normal benefit business. Around one and a half million of the poorest pensioners, those receiving Income Support (IS) or income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA(IB)), received their payment of £50 during January. Other eligible pensioners are entitled to a payment of £20 or £10. Where they live alone, are the only eligible pensioner in a household, or are of no fixed abode, they are entitled to £20; otherwise, they are entitled to £10, including each person in a pensioner couple if they are both in receipt of a qualifying benefit. Not all of the information requested is available. The BA collates IS and JSA(IB) statistics by BA District Office. These Districts do not correspond to constituency boundaries or this specific geographical area. Such information as is available relates to the number of instances in the Wearside BA District (which includes the offices of Houghton-le-Spring, Seaham and Wearside) where we made a £50 payment. A total of 11,187 £50 payments were made during January 1998 following a scan of each of the benefit computer systems. It is likely that a small number of additional payments will also have been made where entitlement was identified locally due to the eligible pensioner's details not being held on the computer system at the time the scans were done. This information is provisional and may be subject to change. Information relating to all other pensioners who received payments of £20 or £10 could only be provided at disproportionate cost. Thank you for the opportunity to explain the position.