State Pension Credit (Disclosure of Information) (Electricity Suppliers) Regulations 2010

I stress that this is a pilot that is seeking, I suppose, to do two things: to reach and support people with a credit to their electricity bills, while testing what data-matching of this nature can do. There is the prospect of that progressing once we come on to the mandated or compulsory scheme in due course. There is that benefit to flow from it as well, and I suggest that we should focus strongly on that. The noble Lords, Lord Oakeshott and Lord Freud, talked about take-up of pension credit. The Government have done much to make sure that there is full and improved take-up of pension credit. It is a challenge, but we know that take-up of the guarantee credit element of pension credit is higher. We think it is of the order of 72 to 81 per cent. It is the savings component of pension credit which tends to have less take-up.