Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the impact assessment entitled Converting Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) from a benefit into a loan, published by her Department in June 2017, and the statistics entitled Conversion of Support for Mortgage Interest from a benefit into a loan, published by her Department on 23 March 2018, what assessment her Department has made of the reasons for the reduction in the number of support for mortgage interest claimants from 124,000 to 90,000.

The latest data shows the current Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) caseload is 103,000. Since the publication of the figures in March 2018 showing a caseload of 90,000 a technical problem has been corrected on the Management Information system used to produce the figures. The technical problem caused the records of some claimants to be moved to a different computer system ahead of the introduction of the SMI loan scheme on 6^th April 2018 and meant they were missing from the earlier figures published in March.

The number of claimants in receipt of SMI is reducing over time because fewer claimants are receiving SMI on Pension Credit.

New management information on the conversion of SMI to a loan will be published on 24^th April 2018.