To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will set out (a) the number of claimants, (b) the number of claimants' partners and (c) the number of dependants on supplementary benefit and income support in each year from 1979 to the latest available.
This information is published annually in the supplementary benefits or income support statistics, copies of which are available in the Library.It is regretted that there was a transcription error in one figure of a previous answer to a similar question, on 5 November 1991, columns
85–86. The number of claimants in May 1987 should have read 4,895,525 not 4,095,525.
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will give for (a) 1979–80, (b) 1983–84, (c) 1987–88 and (d) 1991–92 the average number of claimants in receipt of (i) benefits paid to disabled people and (ii) benefits paid to retired people.
I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to him by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe), on 9 March 1992 at columns 422–23.