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In My View

Posted by Robert Walter, MP for North Dorset, at 10:22, Fri 27 June 2008:

IN MY VIEW

With Parliament this week debating the cost of living it is worth reflecting that huge hikes in the price of gas, electricity and with higher council tax and other household bills, many people are finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet. Pensioners who are living on fixed incomes are often affected the most by these rising costs. However, billions of pounds that should be helping them is going unclaimed every year. Official estimates suggest that up to four in 10 pensioners entitled to pension credit – money paid to top up the basic state retirement pension of £87.30 a week - are not getting the extra cash they are due.

As much as £2, 500 million went unclaimed last year. Many pensioners simply assume they do not qualify, or are daunted by the prospect of making a claim. But in making a claim for pension credit they could increase their income to around £120 a week for a single person or £182 a week for a couple. If they claim before October 2008, some could also get a substantial lump sum, as payment can currently be backdated for up to a year. The Citizens Advice Bureau has recently expressed its concerns that the Government proposes to cut the backdating period for pension credit and housing and council tax benefit claims to three months from this autumn

Success in supporting low income families through housing benefit also depends on high take-up. Take-up of housing benefit is low - only around 50 per cent claimed last year. The CAB tell me they regularly deal with people who are unaware of their entitlement to housing benefit as they believe that because they are in work, they are not eligible to claim. However, means-tested housing benefit can be paid to those in work but on low incomes.

It is also clear from bureaux evidence that even amongst those who do claim, some of their clients have not been receiving the correct amount of housing benefit as their claim has been incorrectly assessed. As I know from constituents who come to my “surgeries”, sometimes people can fall into arrears over rent because of problems with housing benefit, often not the fault of the client. Much low paid work is temporary or involves hours and wages which continually fluctuate. The requirement to report every change in circumstance on a weekly basis then becomes a major problem, both for the claimant struggling to juggle finances on a low income, and for benefit administrators.

The Government seems to be getting closer to introducing reforms to the Coroners system. I have written here before about the case of Blandford baby Ryan Franklin. This 18 month old baby remained in mortuary for nearly two years while his father awaited trial for the death. Despite some recent reforms following the Human Rights Act, the inquest system still has a narrow legal remit that often excludes from the inquest the issues of greatest concern to the family.

Inquests are too often at risk of being opportunities for official and sanitised versions of deaths to be given judicial approval rather than being an opportunity for the family to discover the truth and full circumstances surrounding the death of their loved one. Delays of two or three years to the inquest process are not uncommon. This causes difficulty for all concerned but particularly so for bereaved people who have described how their lives have been put on hold until they have been through the inquest process.

I hope the next Queen’s Speech in December will end the years of campaigning by me and others to end these iniquitous anomalies.