State Pension Credit Pilot Scheme Regulations 2010

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate. Several points have been raised, which I will endeavour to respond to. I start with the question of my noble friend Lord Kirkwood on means-testing and the signal that it gives out. Whatever system we end up adopting—whether we go for a higher basic pension, as he suggested he supported, or stay with means-testing—there will always be the need for some sort of safety net, given that it is a contributory system. That does not send a message that the Government want more means-testing at the heart of their vision. Nevertheless, it remains the case that we want to ensure that pensioners get what they are entitled to. The noble Lord asked this pointed question: if there are no plans to roll the system out nationally, what is the point of spending a goodly sum, £1 million, in the present climate? When you look at the scale of the problem, with 1 million pensioners not getting the help that they are entitled to, despite the efforts of PDCS and third sector organisations, we need to think innovatively. Clearly, we are not in a position to roll out a fully automated system today, and we need to build up the evidence base to establish what kind of information we need to get people more of the help that they deserve. The cost of the study was queried by my noble friend Lord Kirkwood. The current revised estimate of the cost of the whole study is £800,000. Will we have the necessary information to evaluate at the end of the study? There are several elements to the evaluation. We will be asking a sample of the customers to participate in a face-to-face interview and using research contractors who know how to encourage participation. The interviews will be carried out in the place most convenient to the participants—probably in their own homes. Then we will track the take-up of the pension credit of people who have participated in the pilot. Those data are gathered automatically as part of the administrative system. Finally, we will gather the claims data from those who claim pension credit as part of the pilot. Again, that will be done via our own systems. Homing in on the point on which I touched just now on national rollout, there are no plans for a national rollout. This is a study to help build the evidence base to see what we may be able to do in this area in the future. The complexity and the staff training required are not as daunting as my noble friend Lord Kirkwood suggested. The study will be run by a centralised team rather than small groups across the country. The definitions of income and capital are very much based on the definitions used in standard pension credit. If there are any changes, these will be introduced to make them simpler. We do not have any concerns about our ability to train staff to administer these payments effectively. My noble friend mentioned the Daily Mail in connection with possible stories about lots of money whizzing off to the Costa Brava. The pension credit is not an exportable social security benefit. Therefore, I assure him that we will select people to take part only if they are resident in Great Britain. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about process. Pensioners can claim housing benefit and council tax benefit alongside pension credit in a single phone call without the need for a signed claim form. Their calls to the 0800 claims number from a BT landline or from the six largest mobile phone networks are free. The noble Lord asked whether 2,000 was sufficient as a sample size. We are confident that 2,000 participants will deliver a sufficient range of circumstances to build a meaningful evidence base. He asked about recovery of money in different ways in terms of the interplay with other claims. I make it absolutely clear that under no circumstances will anyone receiving a payment under these regulations be asked to repay a penny. We will make sure that participants in the study are made fully aware of that fact. Both the noble Lord and my noble friend asked about the 12-week length of the pilot. It was important to balance two factors; namely, to make the pilot long enough to collect enough meaningful information and to protect public funds which are in short supply. The determination is that 12 weeks is a reasonable compromise between those two objectives. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about passporting and the exclusion of housing benefit and council tax benefit, as it is called at the moment. If we had added in those two benefits, it would have added a significant level of complexity and cost to the pilot. From the outset it was never the intention that the interaction between pension credit and housing benefit and council tax benefit should be factored into this study. Clearly, we expect to learn more about issues such as people’s attitudes to receiving automatic payments of benefit, which may have wider application to other benefits such as housing and council tax benefits.