Clause 6 - Duty to specify assessed income period
State Pension Credit Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Professor Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
Clause 6 sets out an assessed income period, and the presumption is that that period will be five years for anyone of 65 or over. I hope that the Minister will clarify what it will be for those under 65, and whether it will be akin to the weekly assessment that happens under income support, whether it will be one year, or what. I am hazy on that.
I have one point that I hope that the Minister will address. The nub of the Government's contention that the assessment is a more humane form of means-testing rests primarily on the fact that people will only be assessed every five years. There will be an assessed income period, which, once people are 65, will be five years.
There will be circumstances, which claimants will be obliged to report, in which that period will not be five years. It is not clear whether the Government have researched or made estimates of—I hope that the Minister will inform the Committee about this—the question how, if the assessed income period is set at five years, someone will typically run five years without contacting the Department to reassess their pension credit? If, for example, hitting a particular age, losing a partner or another major change in circumstance prompts a reassessment, two years, rather than five, might become the norm, or half of all claimants might have to put in fresh claims three times in five years. In that case, all the benefits claimed for only having to be assessed once every five years will be greatly diminished.
Although the attraction of means-testing somebody every five years rather than every week is self-evident, five years might not be the outcome if many people have changes in their circumstances that require them to report more regularly, or have changes in their circumstances that they would want to report because if they did not do so they would lose out. I should be grateful if the Minister were to tell us the Department's assessment of how many people will, even if the period in the clause is set to five years, be reassessed more frequently. Will it concern a minority, or will the typical pension credit recipient find themselves in contact with the Department far more frequently than every five years? That is critical to our assessment of how far that is humane means-testing, or how far it
will end up being regular contact with the Department, and I should be grateful for clarification.