Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Laura Trott and Desmond Swayne

Monday 24th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Laura Trott]

I am sorry to hear about the pensioners involved. If they are eligible for pension credit and not claiming, I assume the hon. Lady is helping them. As a Department we are happy to give any assistance to those individuals. We are doing all we can to boost pension credit uptake. There was a campaign before Christmas, which I am sure she was part of, to get people to claim the cost of living payment, which we will repeat this year. We saw a 177% increase in claims just before Christmas. There will also be the pension credit week of action for the summer on 12 to 16 June, which I hope many hon. Members will take part in.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Ministers agitated for us all to get involved in the campaign to extend the uptake of pension credit. Has the Minister any innovative plans that will make it easier for us to do so, such as toolkits and the like?

[Laura Trott]

Absolutely. I am also looking at what more we can do to use data from housing benefit and from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to make it easier to target people for a claim. Working together, we can make a real difference in the number of pension credit claimants in this country.