Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of eligible people claimed Pension Credit in each of the last five financial years.

Information relating to Pension Credit eligibility is only available via take-up statistics. The latest available Pension Credit take-up statistics for Great Britain cover the financial year 2021 to 2022 and are available at: Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year ending 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The next release of statistics for Financial Year Ending 2023 will be published on Thursday 10 October 2024. The below table shows the number of eligible people receiving Pension Credit and the estimated take up of Pension Credit.

Please note that Financial Year Ending 2021 proportion of take-up is not available due to the pandemic restricting the number of face-to-face interviews required to collect the data. Also, the take-up figures shown below are central estimates.