asked Her Majesty's Government:

What the annual cost of a £12 disregard on pension credit would be in (a) 2015, (b) 2025, and (c) 2050. [HL2285]

The information is shown in the table below.

The estimates refer to the annual cost of introducing a £12 weekly private pension income disregard for all income-related benefits (pension credit, housing benefit and council tax benefit), in 2008-09. The disregard has been increased by earnings in each year following 2008-09.

Notes 1. In the financial years up to and including 2013-14 Treasury economic assumptions have been used to model earnings uprating. After this point a long-term earnings growth assumption of 4.93 per cent has been applied. 2. Estimates have been calibrated to published medium-term forecasts of expenditure on income-related benefits. 3. Estimates refer to the United Kingdom and are in 2007-08 prices. They have been rounded to the nearest £0.1 billion. 4. Estimates account for the state pension reforms in the Pensions Act 2007, but they do not take into account private pension reforms as detailed in the current Pensions Bill. 5. Care should be taken when interpreting these estimates. Projections of the expenditure on income-related benefits are sensitive to modelling assumptions and to projected changes in the distribution of pensioner incomes.