Winter Fuel Payments (Hansard, 31 July 1998)

§ Mr. Denham

Winter fuel payments are one of a number of initiatives the Government has taken to help vulnerable people, especially the elderly, keep warm this winter. Originally a total of £400 million was committed for two years (97–98 and 98–99), to help pensioners with fuel bills to pay.

As announced during the statement to the House on 17 July 1998, Official Report, columns 703–15, a further £0.5 billion has been allocated to extend the scheme beyond next winter. This will provide each eligible pensioner household with an annual £20 winter fuel payment.

The administration of Winter Fuel Payments is a matter for Peter Mathison, Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member.

Letter from Peter Mathison to Mr. David Rendel dated 30 July 1998: The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking how many pensioner households in Scotland (a) were entitled to receive the winter fuel payment, (b) received their winter fuel payment by (i) January, (ii) February and (iii) March 1998, (c) received incorrect winter fuel payments and (d) received duplicate winter fuel payments. The information is not available in the format requested and can be obtained only at disproportionate cost. The making of Winter Fuel Payments to almost ten million eligible pensioners, in over seven million households, before the end of March 1998 was a challenging task for the Benefits Agency. This was achieved whilst maintaining normal business. We issued 1,441,614 £50 payments to the poorest pensioners, those receiving Income Support (IS) or income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), by 31 January. Other eligible pensioners were entitled to a payment of £20 or £10. Where they lived alone, were the only eligible pensioner in a household, or were of no fixed abode, they were entitled to £20; otherwise, they were entitled to £10. In order to establish other eligible pensioners, correctly identify pensioner households, and determine the amount each should receive, it was necessary to correlate data. This involved around fifteen million computer records, fifteen qualifying benefits, across nine computer systems. Where only one eligible person was identified as living at an address a payment of £20 was made and if more than one eligible person was identified as living at an address a payment of £10 was made. By the end of March we issued a further 8,326,715 payments to these eligible customers. Where official Departmental records were not correct or incomplete, it was possible that the amount of some payments may not have corresponded with the actual circumstances. For example, there were cases where two eligible pensioners lived at the same address and in the same household, but the address details held on the relevant benefit computer records were incorrect or incomplete for either or both of them. In such cases, the data correlation exercise may not have identified more than one eligible person at an address and in accordance with the provisions of the legislation each were entitled to a payment of £20. There is no overprovision in such instances, but any voluntary offer to repay any amount would be accepted. Of payments made to IS and income-based JSA pensioners in January we are aware that some payments were incorrectly made or duplicated. We know that 9,357 payments were made where information held within official records indicated payment was inappropriate. A further 211 duplicate payments were made to those pensioners who transferred from IS to income-based JSA during the qualifying week of 5 January 1998. Of the relevant payments this 758W represents a 0.68 per cent. error rate. In financial terms the total cost of these errors amounts to £488,400, and against this represents 0.68 per cent. of the total sum issued of £72,080,700. In addition we also know that due to a computer operator error, 40,801 IS payments were sent out with an incorrect issue date on them. All these girocheques were replaced automatically within 72 hours. To date we are aware that in 438 cases both the original and replacement payments have been cashed. I hope you find this information helpful.