Social Security

I will happily supply the hon. Gentleman with a copy of our proposals in that regard. He knows that we have had debates on the Floor of the House, we have raised and highlighted the issue on many occasions, and we have been complaining for a long time about the complexity of the benefits system and the hundreds of different forms that pensioners have to fill in. I turn to another aspect of complexity on which it would be useful to have the most up-to-date statistical summary from the Government—some of the issues relating to the order. We understand that the problems that Government Departments experienced last year in respect of data transfer—I am sure the Minister is familiar with those, as are other hon. Members—apparently led to a review by his Department's Permanent Secretary of how data are transferred. As a result, a temporary suspension of the movement of data was introduced. That has meant, among other things, that the Department's quarterly statistical summary, which should have been published on 13 February, was not released. There may have been a statistician out there who was prevented from giving his or her ideal Valentine's day gift on 13 February, but we need an up-to-date statistical picture of the work of the Department. Can the Minister say how long the review will last? Can he give us an assurance that the information that was not published on 13 February will eventually be published, and can he give us some indication when that is likely to be? We know that there are many administrative problems affecting the Government in general and the Department in particular, but we would like to see statistics published as soon as possible, so that we will have an opportunity to monitor some of the aspects about which we have been asked many questions this afternoon by those on the Government Benches. On the subject of administrative problems in the Department, I would be grateful if the Minister could throw some light on the extent of error in the Department's benefit payments. The benefits uprating order is important in that respect. In a written answer to me on 17 September last year, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt), told me that the error in benefit payments had risen from a value of £1.1 million in 2000-01 to £1.9 million in 2005-06. It has risen for every year in that period. Can the Minister give us any more up-to-date figures on that? Can he explain the increase? Can he say how much is because of customer error and how much is down to official error, and what steps are being taken to reduce the loss? A number of the payments specified in the schedules to the uprating order relate to children as, for example, in the case of payments for dependent children in income support, where there will be an increase from £47.45 to £52.59 each week. We need to see how those and other upratings in the order fit into the overall picture on child poverty. Some 2.8 million children now live in poverty before housing costs are taken into account, and 3.8 million do so after housing costs. It may interest Labour Members to know that the number of children living in poverty is on the increase: in 2006, it rose by 100,000 before housing costs and by 200,000 after housing costs.