Oral Answers to Questions
Alistair Strathern Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
Damien Egan (Bristol North East) (Lab)
Andrew Western
The household support fund is intended to support a wide range of households in need, including pensioner households. There has been no ringfencing of funding for specific groups since October 2022, meaning that local authorities have the flexibility to support pensioners who are just above the pension credit threshold. In the 2023-24 financial year, 26% of household support funding went towards meeting energy costs.
Alistair Strathern
I welcome the Government’s decision to provide more than £1 billion in new funding for the household support fund, extending it all the way through next year, and to give much more notice to the local authorities that deliver it. The funding is so important not just to countless vulnerable residents, but to great local organisations, such as the Need Project food banks in my constituency. How will the Department work with local authorities to make the most of the notice and to ensure the funding goes as far as possible?
Andrew Western
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As a former local authority leader, I know that above all else, certainty will allow councils to design and deliver sustainable plans for local welfare assistance. The Government’s commitment to funding the HSF until March 2026 offers that certainty and time to plan with greater confidence. To that end, we will confirm individual allocations for the forthcoming one-year extension to the HSF as soon as possible, and ahead of the scheme beginning on 1 April.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alistair Strathern Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Liz Kendall
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. This is not just about urging people to come forward and claim. We are writing to pensioners on housing benefit for the first time ever, and I am determined to bring forward the merger of housing benefit and pension credit, which the former Government delayed for years. I very much agree about the need to bring together social prescribing with help from the household support fund and other areas to make sure pensioners get all the help they need, and about the need to work with frontline NHS staff, as we are also doing, to make sure that the poorest who may be stuck at home with chronic conditions also know what they are entitled to.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
It is clear that one of the drivers of pensioner poverty is the sheer number of pensioners eligible for pension credit who have been left not claiming it for successive years by the previous Government. I welcome the Secretary of State’s zeal for making sure that we put that right, but how can we as Members from across the House work with her Department to make sure that there are no unnecessary barriers for those who are eligible and in need of pension credit to claiming it this winter?
Liz Kendall
I would urge all hon. Members in this House to work with their local councils, as I am doing, to make sure that those on housing benefit and other pensioners know what they are entitled to, and to make sure that their councils know that the household support fund—the £421 million we have set aside this year, despite all the problems we face—is also available to those pensioners just above the pension credit level.