Clause 13 - Transitional provisions
State Pension Credit Bill [Lords]
5:30 pm
Mr Ian McCartney (Minister for pensions, Department for Work and Pensions; Makerfield, Labour)
I thank the hon. Gentleman. If he hears nothing, he should not surmise that there is a problem. He will have to trust me to get in touch with him with information that is not just a regurgitation or re-spin of what was said before. We will let him know where we are up to as we make progress.
During the transition period, we need to be able to transfer the 1.8 million people who qualify for state pension credit from the existing income support system, so that there is no interruption to their income. We intend to make regulations that will enable them to be treated as having made a claim for state pension credit. They will be notified of their new entitlement and will have the normal right to ask for a review or appeal. This proposal will remove the need for them to make a separate claim and so minimise bureaucracy and ensure continuity of payment.
We will introduce arrangements that will enable staff in the Department for Work and Pensions to recalculate these cases before October 2003 and arrange payments of state pension credit from the appropriate date. That answers one of the points that the hon. Member for Daventry made about the bulge in 2003–2004. In addition, there are 6.3 million households with someone aged 60 and over of whom we estimate some 2.4 million could be entitled to pension credit. We will systematically identify and contact them over the 18-month period from April 2003 to October 2004 to ensure they know what to do to take up their entitlement. We will make provision in the regulations that will allow backdating of the payment of pension credit to the start date in October 2003 if an application is made by October 2004 so that no pensioner need lose out.