Asked by: Peter Bedford (Conservative - Mid Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in Mid Leicestershire constituency will be impacted by the decision to abolish universal winter fuel payments.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
An estimated 70,000 people in Mid Leicestershire constituency will be affected by the change to Winter Fuel Payments. This is the estimated number of people in Mid Leicestershire constituency that will no longer receive Winter Fuel Payment as they do not claim Pension Credit.
This estimation is calculated by subtracting the number of Pension Credit recipients for Mid Leicestershire from the number of Winter Fuel Payment recipients for Mid Leicestershire (using the latest statistics, sources shown below).
Please note that following boundary changes to Parliamentary Constituency, data on Mid Leicestershire constituency is not explicitly available/ published. To obtain the above figure, local authority data on Blaby, Charnwood and Hinckley & Bosworth have been combined. Therefore, the above figure of 70,000 is likely to be an overestimate as the Mid Leicestershire constituency consists of some wards of the boroughs of Blaby, Charnwood and Hinckley & Bosworth.
Also, the published Pension Credit figures refer to households, so the number of individuals will be higher (i.e. taking account of households where it’s a couple claiming Pension Credit).
Furthermore, the above does not take into account any potential increase in Pension Credit take-up we might see as a result of the policy. We do not have data on those additional Pension Credit claims by Parliamentary constituencies.
Sources used:
winter-fuel-payments-caseload-2022-to-2023.ods (live.com)
Stat-Xplore - Table View (dwp.gov.uk)