Attendance allowance provides an important non-contributory, non-income-related and tax free cash contribution towards the extra costs of severely disabled people. The Government are committed to providing real help to disabled people, particularly through the early stages of economic recovery. This is why the Chancellor announced in the December 2009 pre-Budget report that attendance allowance would be increased by 1.5 per cent.—bringing forward help when it is most needed. Without this commitment, the recent negative growth in the Retail Prices Index would have meant that this benefit would not have increased in 2010.
From 27 October 2008 we replaced incapacity benefits for new customers with the employment and support allowance and a revised medical assessment which focuses on what people can do, as well as what they cannot.
The principal function of pension credit is to tackle pensioner poverty by topping up the incomes of pensioners over 60 to the guaranteed minimum amount appropriate to their circumstances.
The information requested is in the table.
Benefit Number of cases in payment Average weekly amount paid (£) Pension Credit (households) 4,570 48.81 Attendance Allowance 1,990 59.29 Incapacity Benefit/Severe Disablement Allowance 3,930 94.43 Jobseeker's Allowance 980 62.70 Notes: 1. Benefit recipients are rounded to the nearest 10. 2. Average weekly amounts rounded to the nearest penny. 3. Benefit recipients receiving more than one of these benefits will be counted under each benefit. 4. Attendance allowance totals exclude people with entitlement where the payment has been suspended, for example if they are in hospital. 5. These data do not include claimants of employment and support allowance introduced from October 2008. 6. All data refer to benefit recipients and will therefore exclude credits only and nil payment cases. 7. Household is defined here as the number of individuals or couples in receipt of pension credit and equates to a “benefit unit” which, since 2006, also include same-sex partners. Two individuals who are not partners but live in the same house are counted as separate households. Source: Department for Work and Pensions Information Directorate: Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study.