Research Briefing
Cold Weather Payments of 25 pounds a week are made to certain recipients of Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance or Pension Credit during periods of very cold weather. To ‘trigger’ the payments, the average temperature at a specified weather station must be recorded as, or forecast to be, zero degrees or below for seven consecutive days.
Research Briefing
The Public Service Pensions Bill would establish a framework enabling the Government to introduce new public service pension schemes.
Research Briefing
Under the workplace pension reforms, employers will be required to automatically enrol jobholders into, and to contribute to, a qualifying work place pension scheme.
Research Briefing
Four million (15% of) households in the UK are not connected to the mains gas grid and their average fuel costs are signifiantly higher than those with a mains gas supply. A Private Members Bill presented by Mike Weir MP aims to help older off-grid households by bringing forward the timing of Winter Fuel Payments to enable them to purchase fuel at a time of year when prices are likely to be lower.
Research Briefing
Includes facts and figures on public service pensions and looks at how costs are measured
Research Briefing
This note provides a summary of recent reforms to the LGPS and the debate around future reforms
Research Briefing
A summary of statistics relating to Employment and Support Allowance and other incapacity-related benefits.
Research Briefing
This note looks at reforms introduced to the Local Government Pension Scheme in April 2008. The current debate on further reforms to the scheme is in SN 5823 Local Government Pension Scheme - 2010 onwards
Research Briefing
Statistics on working-age claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and its predecessor incapacity-related benefits in each constituency in Great Britain. In November 2011 there were 2.57 million claimants of these benefits in Great Britain.
Research Briefing
This paper summarises the Second Reading and Committee of the Whole House stages of the Local Government Finance Bill 2010-12, which has been carried over into the 2012-13 session. Library Research Paper 12/01, Local Government Finance Bill 2010-12, published for Second Reading on 10 January 2012 in the 2010-12 session, is relevant.
Research Briefing
Looks at current proposals to increase employee contributions to public service pension schemes
Research Briefing
The 2010 Spending Review announced that contributory Employment and Support Allowance for claimants in the Work-Related Activity Group would be limited to 12 months. The time limit takes effect on 30 April 2012. For some claimants, benefit will stop immediately. All recipients of contributory ESA in the WRAG, including Incapacity Benefit claimants “migrated” to ESA on reassessment, will be affected by the time limit. Savings of almost £1.5 billion a year are expected by 2015-16.
Research Briefing
At the Conservative Party conference in October 2010 the Chancellor announced that from January 2013 Child Benefit would be withdrawn from families with a higher rate taxpayer. Revised proposals were set out in Budget 2012 under which Child Benefit will instead be clawed back gradually from families with a taxpayer with an income between £50,000 and £60,000 a year.
Research Briefing
At the moment, couples with children need only work at least 16 hours a week in order to qualify for Working Tax Credit. From April 2012, this will increase to 24 hours for most couples. Over 200,000 families will be affected, and there are concerns about the impact on those unable to increase their hours to meet the new threshold. The change does not affect lone parents, for whom the 16 hour threshold for WTC will still apply.
Total results (page 41 of 51)