Welfare Reform Bill

I am indebted to the Royal British Legion for the text of this amendment and for the accompanying briefing. I am informed that the legion has been engaged in a campaign designed to alleviate pension poverty among older veterans. That followed research it commissioned, which showed that 38 per cent of older veterans, their spouses and widowers report an income level below that required for healthy living. Despite these low income levels, it is estimated that only 55 to 61 per cent of all pensioners who qualify for council tax benefit actually make a claim. The Department for Work and Pensions has estimated that up to £1.5 billion of CTB is left unclaimed by pensioners each year. For this reason, the legion has embarked on a campaign to rename council tax benefit and to call it a rebate. It believes that this is a simple, cost-effective and practical way of helping pensioners, many of them in the ex-service community. It believes that this will increase take up considerably, thereby lifting tens of thousands of pensioners out of poverty. The legion has done a fair amount of research to see whether it would have that effect. It conducted a poll through ComRes as recently as May 2009 and found that 75 per cent of members of the public agree that renaming council tax benefit as a rebate might help encourage more people to make a claim for it. These words were used by the DWP in its submission to the 2007 Communities and Local Government Select Committee, so it is good to know that there are people in all areas who are in agreement with the notion that changing the name to rebate would have the effect that the legion believes that it will. It has also got support from a number of organisations, including, as I said, the Select Committee. It also believes that it has support across the political spectrum. It says that it has support from the leaders of the Conservatives and of the Lib Dems, both of whom have written to the legion to say that they support the rebate. In view of all this and the fact that there is a substantial amount of support right across the board for what is now proposed, I hope the Government will take heed of the results of the campaign and be prepared to accept the amendment—which would, I am sure, have the effect of ensuring that claims are made by a number of people who at the moment apparently are too proud to claim benefit. That is very true of many veterans, but of course it is true of many pensioners as well. They do not like to be "shamed", as they see it, into claiming for benefits. That may strike some of us as rather odd, but it is how they feel about it. I think that we should respond to that. If we change the name to rebate, there will not be the feeling of shame in making an application and more people will apply for what is their entitlement. I beg to move.