§ Miss McIntosh:To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement on the means-testing of pensions. [141448]
§ Malcolm Wicks:Under Pension Credit pensioners are subject to a new form of assessment, which is much less intrusive and burdensome. Pension Credit has removed the old weekly means test. Instead, most pensioners aged 65 and over have their award fixed for five years and have to tell us only about major changes in their circumstances.
Around half of all pensioner households are eligible for Pension Credit and other income related benefits, and stand to gain, on average, £400 a year. Our priority is to target help on the poorest pensioners and there are already over 1.2 million pensioner households (around 1.4 million individuals) getting more money than they did before.