§ Mr. David StewartTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what the Northern Ireland social fund discretionary budget will be for 2000–01. [120910]
§ Mr. George HowarthI am pleased to announce that the social fund gross discretionary budget for 2000–01 will be £45.95 million. £10.06 million will be allocated to grants; £35.79 million to loans and £0.1 million will be held as a contingency reserve. The new allocations represent an increase of £3.13 million over the initial gross budget set at April 1999.
The Community Care Grant (CCG) budget has been increased by £0.2 million to £10.06 million. This will provide more help to CCG applicants, in particular families with children and the disabled.
The loans budget has been increased to £35.79 million, an increase of £2.93 million on the initial 1999–2000 loans budget. To improve the fairness of the scheme budgets will be allocated in a way that will, over time, achieve greater consistency of outcome for applicants wherever they live.
Details of the individual District budget allocations, together with a note explaining the basis on which they have been made, have been placed in the Library today.