Social Security

Our basic aim is to get as many pensioners as we possibly can to take up the rights to which they are entitled. The money is there, so we are able to cover the costs. Getting pensioners to make a telephone call to one of the helplines is basically all it takes: we would like a 100 per cent. take-up if we could get it, but we do not have it at the moment. If we could get pensioners to make those telephone calls, it would be very helpful; people are waiting on the end of the line to receive them. The straight answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is that in that sense there is no specific target percentage; the objective is to get everyone signed up. The change that I announced last December should help us substantially in that regard. One of the problems we have faced is that pensioners often feel that they do not want to fill in the forms, they do not want other people to know their business or their private information and they perhaps do not like accepting charity. But one thing that pensioners certainly do not like doing is paying council tax. [Interruption.] Well, nobody likes paying tax, as Conservative Members are pointing out from a sedentary position. It is probably true that nobody likes paying taxes, but we need to pay them. However, after October we will change how we make available those access points to benefit. Rather than a pensioner having to make a telephone call, receive a form, sign the form and send it on to the local authority to access some help with council tax, we are aiming to automate all that. The pensioner will make one telephone call and the Department will be able to do all the work. All the Department will then have to do is send a letter to the pensioner saying, ““It is done.”” It will also send a letter to the local authority, or probably an e-mail in this example, saying, ““This now has to be put into payment.”” Some of the various pensioner groups have been asking for that for a long time. It is what I announced last December, and we will bring it into effect in October. That will require evening up some benefits. We will pay for that by reducing the back payment of pension credit as from October to three months rather than a year. We are finding the funding for that, and as a result we hope to lift about 50,000 pensioners who are in poverty out of it.