Pensions: Females

Annette Brooke
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what measures he has put in place to deal with the additional workload in his Department arising from women born in 1947 reaching pension age.

James Purnell
Our workload volumes forecasts take account of published population projections, provided by the Government Actuary's Department, as well as the impact of current and planned policy initiatives, including state pension deferral and state pension reform. Any female population growth from 1947 will therefore be factored into our state pension and pension credit workload forecasts from 2007.

This information is then used to calculate and plan the resources required to administer forecast workloads. This, and other factors such as planned productivity improvements brought about through our transformation programme, will be factored into long term planning. Decisions about budgets and workforce deployment take into account affordability, value for money and the different priorities of our key customer groups. The process for ensuring sufficient resources are in place to handle any increase in workload is robust and staffing allocations are made to maintain a high standard of customer service.