Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Written Statement of 14 January 2019, HCWS1249, on pensions update, what estimate she has made of the number of people who will be affected by changes to pension credit in each local authority.

The Welfare Reform Act 2012 amended the entitlement conditions for Pension Credit so as to require both members of a couple to have reached the qualifying age for Pension Credit before the couple can be entitled to it.

The change will not affect mixed age couples who are entitled to Pension Credit and/or pension age Housing Benefit immediately before the implementation date, unless their entitlement to both those benefits subsequently ends.

The number of mixed age couples that are estimated to be affected by the change in the future is not available at local authority level.