Clause 2 - Entitlement: basic cases
Age-Related Payments Bill
9:45 am
Mr Malcolm Wicks (Minister for pensions, Department for Work and Pensions; Croydon North, Labour)
Clause 2 sets out the conditions under which a person is eligible for a £100 or £50 payment, whether they are single or a member of a couple. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that that follows the procedure and definitions of winter fuel payments. The short story is that we start off with a £100 payment to a relevant household, which looks simple, but when household composition and one or two other issues are considered, it starts to get a little bit more complicated—although I hope that it is not too complicated.
A single person who is the only qualifying person in the household, or who, regardless of who else is in the household, is in receipt of state pension credit, will be eligible for a £100 payment. A single person who is not receiving state pension credit and is living with another qualifying person will be eligible for a £50 payment. In other words, this is an attempt to even out the £100, rather than assume that the money should always go to the male in the household, and so on. A £100 payment will be made to a qualifying member of a couple when the other member does not qualify, or to the qualifying individual when either member of the couple is in receipt of an income-related benefit. A £50 payment will be made to members of the couple who both qualify for the payment, where neither of them is receiving state pension credit.
These conditions follow what we are doing with the winter fuel payment. In practice, although the payments sound complex, they enable us to have a simple process. In reducing their entitlement from £100 to £50, the amendment discriminates against single pensioners who are not receiving state pension credit and live alone. That would mean depriving around 1.1 million older pensioners of half their entitlement. Many of those people will be older pensioners with incomes that are only just above pension credit level. I assume that the hon. Member for Eastbourne intended that, but I am not certain.