Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will ensure data to help identify people eligible for Pension Credit is made available to local authorities.

The Department already shares extensive data with local authorities for a variety of purposes. Local authorities are allowed to re-use that data under the terms of a data sharing Memorandum of Understanding, subject to them seeking their own legal advice, and subject to them notifying the Department of their intent. This data reuse process can be used to include reusing data originating from DWP to help identify people eligible for Pension Credit.

In order to maximise the take-up of Pension Credit, we are asking local authorities to support our Pension Credit campaign - the Secretary of State and the Deputy Prime Minister wrote to all local authorities in August. Many already undertake their own initiatives to identify eligible households and promote take-up; and over 160 local authorities have responded positively to our ‘call for action’.