10 November 2005 - Extension to the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study
Today the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) announced a new initiative that will help promote and facilitate retirement planning.
Financial data of people aged 60 and over that is already held by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will be shared with DWP, in order to:
- Improve data matching to support Pension Credit take-up campaigns;
- Better understand and research people who work beyond state pension age as part of our research into retirement planning and to assist the development of pensions policy; and
- Understand the links between savings held and the benefits system in retirement and how people are using or accumulating savings in retirement.
At the same time, to support evaluations of effectiveness of welfare-to-work activity and assist the development of evidence based policies to help people obtain and retain employment, earnings information that is already held by HMRC will be shared with DWP for people aged 16 and over and used for people who are or have been DWP clients.
DWP also intend to link Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefit to this database so that the DWP can evaluate policies more effectively and better understand the links between Housing Benefit and the rest of the welfare system and aid in future policy development.
This follows the launch of the ‘Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study’ in January 2004 which already links information currently held by DWP, with data from HMRC. The study was announced in 2003 and has already been used to evaluate services and develop evidence based policy in such areas as New Deals and Pathways to Work.
Members of the public can find out more about the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study by contacting DWPs’ Information Centre on 0191 2253839.
Notes to Editors
- Section 234 of the Pensions Act 2004 provides for the Secretary of State to promote and facilitate retirement planning. To aid these functions sections 235 and 236 of Schedule 10 to the Act provide for information to be supplied to the Secretary of State for this purpose.
- Financial data relating to PEPs, ISAs, TESSAs, private pension pots and saving accounts for all people age 60 and over.
- Housing Benefit / Council Tax Benefit information for all people who have been a DWP client will also be included in the Longitudinal study.
- For the purposes of inclusion of earnings, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit data, DWP customers are classified as those persons who are, or have been a customer to the benefit system administered by DWP for one of the benefits incorporated into the WPLS (note that Child Benefit records are not linked to WPLS).
- The Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study will give DWP greater understanding of its successes, and what aspects of its businesses work well. This will help to improve the delivery of the Government’s agenda for Child Poverty, Welfare-to-Work and Retirement Income and will allow resources to be targeted more effectively.
- The DWP data management systems have been audited by Enterprise Privacy Group, a report of which was published on 3rd February 2005.
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