Pension Credit: Processing of Applications

Part of Treasury – in the House of Commons at on 29 October 2024.

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Photo of Luke Evans Luke Evans Opposition Whip (Commons), Shadow Parliamentary Under Secretary (Culture, Media and Sport)

I am very grateful for the Minister’s answer. I put in a written question to find out how long this would take, and almost one in four people who apply for pension credit are waiting longer than 50 working days for their application to be picked up, which takes us past Christmas and into the new year. That is before the 150% increase in applications referred to in the data released by the Government, so although I am pleased to hear that there are 500 more staff, could we hear how much extra funding is going in immediately to make sure those applications are processed this side of Christmas? Otherwise, pensioners are really going to struggle.