Government Departments: Service Users
House of Lords
Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Independent Labour)
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the policy advocated by the Prime Minister in his speech on 25 June that recipients of welfare benefits should be described as claimants and not customers will be applied to the National Health Service and HM Revenue and Customs, and users described as patients and taxpayers respectively.
Lord Freud (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Welfare Reform), Work and Pensions; Conservative)
The word "claimants" more accurately describes how certain categories of service users interact with the Department for Work and Pensions. It is for individual departments and agencies to make decisions about their service users.