§ Dr. GibsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security for what reasons 24 September was chosen as the cut-off for the winter allowance for 2000–01. [126045]
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§ Angela EagleTo ensure people receive their winter fuel payments in good time to contribute to winter fuel bills, the qualifying week must precede the onset of winter. The week of 18 to 24 September will be used as the qualifying week for the coming winter to ensure that the correct payments can be made before Christmas, in good time to contribute to winter fuel bills. The process for identifying eligible people and determining the amount payable takes around 10 weeks. This allows for completion of the enormous task whereby around 11.5 million people who are now eligible for winter fuel payments are either identified from our records, or through a claims process.
If there were an entitlement provision for those people who had reached age 60 after the qualifying week, greater complexity would be brought to the scheme. The administration process of establishing the eligibility of all those who claimed, by checking age and household circumstances, would take a great deal of time and would add significant expense.
The current approach ensures all those eligible, particularly the oldest, get a significant and well timed payment. Clearly, there will be people who just miss out, but this would happen even if both a qualifying week and mop-up period were used, since the mop-up period would need to end at some point. We believe it has struck the right balance between providing help to the great majority of older people and ensuring that the payments can be made in time for the coldest weather.