§ Mr. KirkwoodTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what effect problems with NIRS2 have had on their ability to produce research and statistics on pensions [61381]
§ Mr. McCartneyData from NIRS fed into two regular pensions related national statistics publications issued by the Department. The publications were "Contributions and Qualifying Years for Retirement Pension" and "Second Tier Pension Provision". The most recent published data relates to the financial year 1995–96. NIRS2 is now able to produce the data required for the Department's statistical publications and departmental analysts are currently working on processing and investigating NIRS2 data covering the financial years up to 2000–01. It is intended that publication will resume later this year.