UK Parliament / Open data

Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

My Lords, I have only a little to add to what has been said. If you do not know how severe a problem is, you cannot do much about it. Having something that looks into the problems of pension policy is a very sensible idea. The Minister will undoubtedly say, “We are—we are doing X, Y and Z” and give us a list, but the fact is that the non-claiming of benefits is something that bedevils our system. By necessity, it is a bureaucratic system, and even if you make the bureaucracy as manageable as possible, it is still there. People who think, “Well, I should not be asking for something else”—something that the pensioner population seems to get an A grade in—means that we have poverty that leads to other problems.

The reason we have given people these back-ups is because they need them: they make their lives better and mean they are not as big a drain on the National Health Service or emergency care going in to support them. It is actually in the general public’s interest to make sure that people are not living in poverty: it leads to problems, to costs and to knock-ons; it makes our lives less pleasant. So, I hope that when the Minister replies, she will give us some idea of how the Government are trying to find this information, because it is needed. To make the system work well, it is needed across the board. If we do not have enough information about issues, we cannot address them. The idea of having some solid knowledge to base future planning on cannot be a bad thing.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

807 c197 

Session

2019-21

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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