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Social Security (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 4) Regulations 2008

My Lords, as a practical matter, when someone makes a claim and follows it the whole way through, they do not necessarily know in advance what the process will entail. The feedback that we have from people working in the service is that, once you get into the process, it is troublesome for people to have to dig out bank statements from 12 months ago or to be asked to justify their circumstances over that period. It is a fraught process. I remember from my days as a local councillor—the noble Lord may do, as well—that filling in forms and helping people with the assessments at surgeries is challenging. That point is real. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, asserted that these changes were about saving money. I reject that, as indeed did the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. They are about targeting resources most effectively. Over the long term, the package results in extra expenditure for pensioners, rising to £250 million per year by 2050 in 2007-08 price terms. We have made the claims for housing benefit and council tax benefit for pensioners more automatic. Customers will be able to claim these alongside pension credit by phone, without the need to complete or sign a claim form. We estimate that about 50,000 pensioners will benefit in the next couple of years. We are also reducing intrusion for people aged 75 or over on pension credit by removing the need for them to report most changes to their retirement income. We estimate that more than 1 million pensioners will benefit through not having to complete a review of their income and capital. We are also increasing to 13 weeks the temporary periods that people can spend abroad without losing their pension credit. I will return to that point and to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, in a moment. These changes were widely publicised, and we have taken steps to ensure that pensioners who thought that they may have been entitled for more than three months but had not claimed did so before 6 October. We are making every effort to ensure that people are aware of and claim their entitlement as soon as they think that they may be entitled. Each week, our local service makes around 13,000 visits and we continue to write to people whom we think may be eligible for pension credit, urging them to claim. The Pension, Disability and Carers Service has joint working partnerships through the implementation stage with all 203 primary-tier local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales. It provides a single point of access to social care and benefits entitlement. We will also work with key welfare-rights organisations to ensure that working-age customers are encouraged to claim in good time and with the Department for Communities and Local Government to get the message across to landlords and tenants. On tenants, if landlords tackle rent arrears at an early stage, that will help to ensure that people who are entitled to help with their housing costs are identified and given the support to make a claim. A number of noble Lords referred to 2000, when previous seemingly similar proposals were withdrawn. A number of important changes have taken place since 2000: namely, a rapid reclaim process for customers undertaking short periods of employment; a shortened housing benefit and council tax benefit claim form for pensioners, which omits sections that are less likely to be used for this customer group; a three-page claim form for pensioners who receive pension credit; and a combined claims process for working-age customers where the housing benefit and council tax benefit claim details are taken alongside claims for income support, jobseeker’s allowance and incapacity benefits. There are many more changes which I do not have time to go through in detail. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, focused on those vulnerable individuals who lead chaotic lives. The SSAC report highlighted the issues facing working-age customers, particularly those vulnerable groups. The concern is that this group may be more likely to get into arrears with housing costs, leading to possible evictions. We believe that six months will allow those customers, including those who are taken to court for rent arrears, sufficient time to apply for housing and council tax benefits backdated to cover the arrears of housing costs. The noble Lord, Lord Best, in particular focused on the possibility of evictions resulting from these changes. We believe that these changes should encourage customers to take more responsibility for their housing costs at an earlier stage and so encourage landlords and local authorities to fulfil their responsibilities to collect rent and council tax, and to take prompt action when arrears accrue. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, talked about times of bereavement. We accept that at such times contacting the DWP will not be a priority. We are taking steps to make claiming after bereavement easier. We review state pension automatically after a partner’s death and a bereavement payment is made without the need for a claim form. A number of points were made about the evidence base for this policy and the data that we use. We looked at information from a wide range of sources, including departmental analysis, local authorities and a number of external stakeholders such as national and local welfare rights agencies, and housing associations. Specifically, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked about monitoring the impact of these changes on working-age claimants. We will collect information from case studies, Citizens Advice and others. We have improved data collection from local authorities and will continue to work with them. We have asked local authorities to keep us in touch and up to date with the impact of these changes. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked whether the Benefit Simplification Unit approved these changes. All changes to policy and regulations are seen and approved by the unit, which has acknowledged that 12 months’ backdating can cause difficulty for staff and customers. This change represents a simplification, bringing backdating rules broadly in line with other income-related benefits. I have dealt with the issue on saving money and I will deal briefly with one point—