Oral Answers to Questions

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

What I am certainly very willing to do is to provide further detail to the shadow Minister, separate from this afternoon’s proceedings. I am absolutely clear that the severe disability group has an important role to play, recognising the challenging conditions people have and that, for many, those conditions will not improve. I am keen to reduce the reassessment burden on people wherever we can, streamline processes, and ensure that people feel properly supported and properly cared for during the course of those processes. That is the right step to take. I am determined that we get this right. Exactly as I said just now, I want to work collaboratively and constructively as we move forward with the White Paper reforms. We have made commitments to test and trial various things, and we will get on and do that.

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

4. What recent estimate he has made of the number of pensioners in poverty.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

19. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the number of pensioners living in poverty.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Laura Trott)]

In 2022, there were 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty than in 2010.

[Holly Lynch]

Mr Brooke from my constituency is nearly 70. He contacted me when his application for pension credit was rejected on the basis that he is £2.55 over the threshold, which rules him out of not only pension credit but any other associated benefit. Mr Brooke signed off his letter to me saying:

“I just can’t afford to live. Yours, Truly Broken”.

What are this Government doing to help people such as Mr Brooke in that incredibly difficult position?