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Social Security

Yes. I am pretty sure that we publish those figures on an annual basis. If the hon. Gentleman cares to check, he will see the point at which they are generally published. I was just about to move on to pension credit take-up, which he legitimately raised. At present, 3.3 million individual pensioners benefit from pension credit. The average award is about £43 a week, which emphasises the importance of taking pension credit up. It is encouraging to see that, in the case of the guarantee credit, which is the aspect of the credit that is directed at the most vulnerable and lowest income pensioner households, the take-up rate is as high as 81 per cent. That is a significant improvement on the minimum income guarantee, which preceded it. Again, we are trying to do all that we can to encourage and extend take-up. Local pension services are running a benefit entitlement check programme. There were more than 2 million mailings as part of that programme last year. As a result of increasing the awareness of the benefit, we are now handling about 4,000 calls a week on the telephone-based application line. Increasingly, we can develop means of using data sharing, based on other information that we have in the Department, to help us to identify customers who we have reason to believe have an entitlement to pension credit, but who may not have taken it up. Using the data-sharing techniques, we can identify who those people are and contact them. That should enable a further increase in take-up over time. Both hon. Gentlemen—again, perfectly reasonably—raised benefit complexity. We all accept that the welfare state has become very complex. Governments of all persuasions have made individual reforms to the welfare system, each perfectly reasonably intentioned, but with the effect of adding yet more changes on to the base and making the thing more complex. It therefore behoves us to try to do what we can to achieve greater simplicity in the system and to iron out some of the complexities that undoubtedly cause problems for the operation of the system and for the customers who receive the benefits. The work of the simplification unit, which was referred to in the debate, has helped us to establish the principles on which we can proceed. For example, we now ask searching questions about any intended reform or revision that we might be thinking of making to the benefit system. The test that it has to pass is whether it will help us to achieve greater simplicity, rather than adding to complexity. The issue is partly about trying to prevent greater complexity coming into the system, as well as looking at a whole range of aspects of the existing system to see whether there are historic complexities that we can iron out by harmonising arrangements. We have done quite a lot of that. Partly as a result of the work that the simplification unit has done, we have already seen about 300 statutory instruments scrapped as a contribution towards achieving greater simplification across the benefit system. However, it is a huge task, as I think that the hon. Member for Yeovil would acknowledge, and no doubt the work will be ongoing for a long time.