Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will provide a table showing (1) each of the benefits that individuals reaching the state pension age are entitled to claim, (2) the number of individuals who are entitled to claim such benefits, and (3) the number of individuals claiming them.

1. Individuals at or above State Pension age may be entitled to apply for financial support from amongst the following DWP benefits, depending upon their personal circumstances:

2. We have data available for the number of families who are entitled to claim such benefits for Pension Credit and Housing Benefit. We do not hold this information for the other benefits in which pensioners may be entitled. These are from the Income-related benefits: estimates of take up: financial year 2018 to 2019.

There are already around 1.4 million people claiming around £5 billion in Pension Credit. We want to make sure that all eligible pensioners claim the Pension Credit to which they are rightly entitled. The DWP conducted a media day in June with support from Age UK and the BBC and others, using national and local media to help reach older people reticent about claiming Pension Credit. There have also been press articles since then to encourage take-up.

The working group which DWP has established includes a diverse range of organisations including pensioner charities as well as the BBC, British Telecom, Virgin Money and the Local Government Association. The group met most recently on 19 October and we hope that it will identify new practical initiatives to help address Pension Credit take up.

3. The number of individuals claiming the following benefits can be found on Table 2c of the Benefit Expenditure and Caseload tables 2021 on Gov.uk.