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From
House of Commons Hansard 18th July 2005
Oral Questions to the Department for Work and Pensions
Mr. Sadiq Khan
(Tooting)
(Lab): My hon. Friend will be aware, from earlier answers to
questions, of how the pension credit has changed the quality
of life of some of the poorest citizens in this country.
What steps, if any, are in place to ensure that information
about how to apply for the pension credit reaches the parts
of the community that most need it—ethnic minority
pensioners, for example, or women pensioners who, as we
heard earlier, are often at the bottom of the chain when it
comes to receiving pension entitlements—and where pensioner
poverty is the likely result?
Mr. Timms:
I completely agree with
my hon. Friend. Many of us had the experience during the
election campaign of meeting retired people whose lives had
been transformed by the improvements brought about by the
pension credit. We are working hard at finding new ways of
getting information across. I agree that there is a
particular challenge when it comes to pensioners in the
ethnic minority communities, and we are developing some new
ideas. Many visits are taking place: I have already
mentioned that there were 200,000 in the last quarter as
compared with 130,000 in the same quarter of the previous
year. What I hope we will increasingly be able to do is to
use data that the Department gains from other sources to
identify those who stand to benefit from pension credit but
are not yet receiving it. We can then help them to make a
claim and perhaps even inform them that they are entitled to
the credit although they do not realise it. There is much
important work to be done on that.
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