Pension Credit Claimants 2022-10-31
2022-10-31
TAGS
Response quality
Questions & Answers
Q1
Direct Answer
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Context
No specific background or context provided.
What recent estimate he has made of the number of pension credit claimants.
As of the latest public data of February 2022 there were 1.38 million pension credit claimants.
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Assessment & feedback
Response accuracy
Q2
Partial Answer
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Context
The MP acknowledges the previous Minister's work but notes that despite this, pension credit take-up is still relatively low in his constituency which has a higher proportion of over-65s than the UK average.
I welcome the new Minister to her place and hope she can continue the excellent work done by the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) in this area. Despite all that excellent work, however, take-up is still relatively low, and my constituency has 20% more over-65s than the UK average. Will the new Minister meet me to discuss how we might be able to make pension credit at least in part an automatic benefit so that struggling pensioners can get the money they are rightly entitled to?
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point but it is difficult to enrol people automatically on pension credit given the data the Government hold. I am, however, keen to see how increased data sharing could be used to produce a larger number of claims.
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Assessment & feedback
Difficulty in automatic enrollment due to government-held data constraints
Response accuracy