Asked by: Hannah Bardell (Scottish National Party - Livingston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the cost to the public purse was of providing free TV licences to people over the age of 75 for qualifying residents in the (a) Livingston constituency and (b) West Lothian local authority area in (i) 2017-18 and (ii) 2018-19.
Answered by Guy Opperman
In the 2015 funding settlement, the Government agreed with the BBC that responsibility for the concession will transfer to the BBC in June 2020.
The government and the BBC agreed this is a fair deal for the BBC - in return we closed the iPlayer loophole and committed to increase the licence fee in line with inflation. And to help with financial planning, we agreed to provide phased transitional funding over 2 years to gradually introduce the cost to the BBC.
This reform was subject to public discussion and debated extensively during the passage of the Digital Economy Act 2017 through Parliament.
On 10 June 2019, the BBC announced that the current scheme will end. From 1 June 2020, a free TV licence will only be available to a household with someone aged over 75 who receives Pension Credit.
The table below provides estimates of the costs for 2017/18 of providing free TV licences to people aged 75 years and over in the geographical areas requested, in nominal prices. The figures for 2018/19 will be available in September.
| Expenditure (£m) (Nominal) |
| 2017-18 |
(a) Livingston constituency | £0.82 |
(b) West Lothian local authority area | £1.39 |
Asked by: Hannah Bardell (Scottish National Party - Livingston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average cost to the public purse is of each universal credit appeal.
Answered by Lord Sharma
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Hannah Bardell (Scottish National Party - Livingston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit appeals her Department has challenged in each year since its introduction.
Answered by Lord Sharma
The number of Universal Credit appeals that the Department has challenged in each year since its introduction can be found in the table below:
2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
0 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 1 |
The above information has been provided on the assumption that the reference to “challenged” means “asked the First-tier Tribunal to either set their decision aside, or to grant permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal” and that “appeals” refers to “decisions of the First-tier Tribunal, adverse to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions”.
Asked by: Hannah Bardell (Scottish National Party - Livingston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of universal credit appeals her Department has lost in each year since the introduction of that benefit.
Answered by Lord Sharma
Statistics on the number and proportion of Universal Credit appeals cleared at a hearing where the decision was in favour of the claimant, are published in Table SSCS_3 of the quarterly statistical publication, “Tribunals and gender recognition certificate statistics quarterly: July to September 2018”, published by the Ministry of Justice and available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics
Asked by: Hannah Bardell (Scottish National Party - Livingston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much her Department has spent on contesting universal credit appeals (a) in total and (b) in cases where her Department has lost the appeal.
Answered by Lord Sharma
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.