Lord Pearson of Rannoch – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Pearson of Rannoch on 2016-02-11.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Freud on 10 February (HL5883), why the incorrect reference to the 20 November 2014 answer has been repeated, and whether they will now state what is the annual cost of paying in-work benefits to non-UK citizens from other EU countries in each of the last five years.

Lord Freud

The November 2014 answer (HL 5012) incorrectly referred to question number 211618 as having been responded to by Priti Patel, when in fact the answer was provided by Esther McVey.

I would like to apologise again for this, but would like to be clear that the mistake was to incorrectly state the name of the Minister providing the original response (211618)) and did not relate to the question number. Both responses HL 5012 and 5883 correctly referred the Honourable Lord to question number 211618.

The original reference to question 211618 was provided because the information has not changed; information on benefit receipt by nationality is not available.