To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when and how people whose retirement pensions are paid monthly into their bank accounts have been informed of the availability of weekly payment. [125286]

The Department has no plans to contact customers who currently receive four-weekly payments into a bank or building society account. Customers will only be contacted if they are directly affected by the change to Direct Payment. Therefore for those pensioners currently paid four weekly directly into their account, payment frequency will remain the same. Any pensioners from this group, who wish to change to weekly payments, will need to contact the Pension Service to request this.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to his answer of 23 June 2003, Official Report, column 630W on pensions, what plans he has to update the figures quoted by the right hon. Member of Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) on 26 November 2002, Official Report, column 210W. [126391]

Departmental analysts are currently working on processing and investigating NIRS2 data covering the financial years up to 2000–01. It is intended that this data will be published in the Autumn.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many pensioner households there are in each region of Great Britain. [125949]

The information is not available in the format requested. However, the information in the table shows the number of households in receipt of a winter fuel payment containing a person of state pension age (60 for women, 65 for men) in each government office region of Great Britain.