Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to help increase the take-up of Pension Credit among eligible pensioners in the North West.

The Government is committed to ensuring that all pensioners, including those in the North West, receive the support to which they are entitled. That is why we have been running the biggest ever Pension Credit take-up campaign across Great Britain, promoting Pension Credit to eligible pensioners and their families. This includes messaging encouraging family members to check eligibility on behalf of parents and grandparents, promoted through television and radio advertising, social media, digital screens in GP surgeries and Post Offices, as well as in national press and in magazines such as Yours, Take a Break and TV Choice.

Specifically, in the North-West we have advertised on the regional versions of radio stations including Greatest Hits Radio, Hits Radio, Classic FM and Smooth and placed adverts in press titles such as Manchester Evening News, Lancashire Telegraph, Lancashire Post, Liverpool Echo, Daily Post Liverpool, and Bolton News. We continue to engage with local authorities and partners and distribute promotional materials, including posters and leaflets. For example, Greater Manchester Ageing Hub cascaded our campaign materials to councils across the city region and a number of community organisations supported the campaign, including Warrington Voluntary Action.

We are also using data to target potentially eligible households. For example, since February, all new Housing Benefit claimants who may be eligible have been invited to apply for Pension Credit and, in a trial with Age UK and Independent Age targeting 2,000 households in England, we are testing whether it is possible to identify potentially eligible households using HMRC and DWP data.