Access to Pension Credit Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Work and Pensions
Nick Smith
Main Page: Nick Smith (Labour - Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney)Department Debates - View all Nick Smith's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
Access to Pension Credit
Nick Smith Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Chris Elmore
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. My point is that if all our constituents claimed the pension credit they are entitled to, it would cost more than providing free TV licences, so surely a good option would be to get better take-up of pension credit and to continue with free TV licences.
The new approach, when packaged in a Government press release, might at first look to some like a logical step to take, but when we unpack it and look at how many people are not accessing the financial support to which they are entitled, we see how utterly disgraceful the policy is and how much of a backward step it is. Put simply, the Government need to stop outsourcing their welfare policy to the BBC.
Of course, the Government provide a range of measures to protect the most hard-pressed pensioners, many of which are welcome and needed, yet their flagship policy to lift pensioners out of poverty—pension credit—is failing.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that the Government need to launch a major awareness-raising campaign about pension credit? There are more than 2,000 households in Blaenau Gwent that could be missing out on a total of £5.6 million every year. They have the right to this money, so let us make sure that they get it.
Chris Elmore
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I completely agree with him that the Government need to do a lot more to encourage pensioners to claim pension credit and make them understand that there is no stigma in their gaining pension credit. However, even in my constituency of Ogmore there is more than £5.1 million that is not being claimed by pensioners, so I completely agree with him, and I hope that the Minister will respond to some of these points at the end of the debate.