Clause 3 - Entitlement: special cases
Age-Related Payments Bill
10:00 am
Professor Steve Webb (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Work & Pensions; Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
I want to get the issue of people in care homes straight. As far as I can see, this is more means-testing; it is even more confusing. If I were 71—wearing well, but 71—and I lived in my own home, I would get £100, whether I was on pension credit or not. However, if I had become ill, needed to be looked after and went into a care home 13 weeks before the qualifying date, I would not get £100; the maximum I could get would be £50, if I read the clause correctly. However, if I were poor and on pension credit, I would not even get £50; I would get nothing.
Where is the logic in that? If people in care homes do not make a contribution to their council tax, and the Bill is about helping people with council tax, why have the Government decided to give them anything? Why do they get £50 if they are not on benefit, but nothing if they are? There is no logic in that. Will the Minister
clarify the way in which people in care homes are being treated and the means-testing element in what he described earlier as a universal payment?
Mr. Waterson rose—