Social Security

Well, the serious problem is that there are 330,000 pensioners who do not have it today, and that is what we should be debating. I noticed the words that the Minister used in his opening remarks. He said that he wanted to see more people claim pension credit, and that the Government ““seek to increase pension credit take-up””. The fact is that the Government have missed their target of paying pension credit to 3 million households. They should have hit that target two years ago, but in 2005-06 some 2.65 million households were in receipt of the credit. It is against that background that we should view the statistic that today in Britain, notwithstanding the satisfaction that the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) and his colleagues feel about the matter, 2 million pensioners live in poverty. The Conservatives join the Minister in the objective of improving the lives of those pensioners and getting through to them the entitlements that they should receive. The National Audit Office estimates that increasing the take-up of pension credit by 10 per cent. would lift an extra 100,000 pensioners out of poverty, while a similar increase in the rate of take-up of housing and council tax benefits would move 130,000 out of poverty. We share the general objective of moving those pensioners out of poverty—we want to see that happen—but the problem is that the Government's present measures, including the uprating order, will not make it happen. I remember the Government being warned when they introduced the pension credit that they were relying on a complex system. Indeed, at one point we were told that they seemed to be relying on the assumption that working people would not understand the system, as if they did, they would choose not to save. To be fair, the Minister acknowledged today as well as in his statement on 5 December some of the problems with pension credit take-up. As a general principle, we welcome any help that can be given to pensioners and others who struggle with the complexity of the system. Ministers have very fairly admitted, finally, that pensioners find the forms confusing, and the Government are trying to put in place a different system to help them. With that in mind, how does the Minister propose to monitor the effects of the changes that he described today and on previous occasions, particularly changes relating to the claiming of pension credit? What is his most recent estimate of take-up of pension credit, and what expectations do the Government have on that front? As a matter of interest, to put his good intentions to the test, what estimate of pension credit take-up has the Chancellor of the Exchequer used in his spending plans for the years to come? What is the Government's estimate of pension credit take-up for those purposes?