§ Mr. DonohoeTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how much has been paid in(a) state retirement benefits to pensioners and (b) in Child Benefit to parents residing in each parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom in each of the past five years. [157395]
§ Mr. Rooker[holding answer 6 April 2001]: Information on annual benefit spending by parliamentary constituency is not available. For 1999–2000 and 2000–01, information is available from a point-in-time scan of administrative data which show numbers of recipients and average amounts of Retirement Pension received by constituency. Similarly, information on numbers of first and subsequent children in each constituency is available for 1999–2000 and 2000–01 from a point-in-time scan. This information has been placed in the Library.
As the information is for a certain point-in-time in each year, any calculation based on the numbers and average amounts would not correspond to the actual annual expenditure in the t constituency. Nor would a total so derived match the total spending on the benefits shown in the accounts.