Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the additional 500 staff deployed to process Pension Credit applications were new employees.

Since the announcement to means test Winter Fuel payments, to date we have increased the resource in Pension Credit claims by approximately 500 staff through a combination of internal redeployments, use of external providers and external recruitment. This is in line with the overall resourcing plan for Pension Credit claims and Winter Fuel payments.