Clause 9 - Duration of assessed income period
State Pension Credit Bill [Lords]
12:15 pm
Professor Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Gentleman has highlighted an important question. I am not sure how often the powers in the clause are likely to be used. One can imagine a circumstance in which the initial claim for
pension credit was made when someone reached state pension age—although I note that the assessed income periods do not start until five years before the claimant is 65—when one could perhaps know that one was going to retire, as opposed to draw state pension, within three months. In other words, it could be apparent that someone's circumstances were likely to change in the near future, so that to set a five-yearly award based on the situation at the time of the first claim would give rise to an almost immediate change. I notice that the clause raises yet another exception to the principle of people having contact with the authorities every five years. Throughout our debates, we are finding more and more exceptions to that principle.
I hope that the Minister will give us some idea about the scope of the subsection that the amendment would withdraw, because if the power is to be used widely, we must ask whether there will really be five-yearly means testing or something quite different.
The other question in the back of my mind is: if the process of picking up changes is as straightforward as we have been told this morning—if people will receive an annual letter, and if fluctuations in earnings are not a problem because they will be reported—why do we need a separate bit of the Bill to deal with cases in which a five-yearly assessment is inappropriate because the situation is atypical? We have just discussed a raft of procedures for dealing with changes in circumstances, which are supposed to be simple and not onerous, so why do we need a separate regime for people whose circumstances, we are fairly sure, will change?