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Backdated Benefits

Volume 479: debated on Monday 21 July 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment his Department has made (1) of the effect on levels of (a) child poverty and (b) pensioner poverty of the Department's proposals to reduce the backdating period for council tax benefit; and if he will make a statement; (219203)

(2) what assessment his Department has made of the likely effect of its proposals to reduce the backdating period for housing benefit on levels of (a) homelessness, (b) child poverty and (c) pensioner poverty; and if he will make a statement.

I refer the hon. Member to the written answer I gave to the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) on 24 April 2008, Official Report, columns 2173-74W.