Another credit - another fiasco?

A scene from the new TV ad

With just a month to go before the introduction of the new Pension Credit, the government has launched a major advertising campaign to get people to claim it.

So far just over two million pensioner households have registered for the credit, which starts on 6 October.

The government wants to have three million households claiming it by 2006.

The £11m advertising campaign is part of a £17m attempt to get pensioners to claim.

It has traditionally been an uphill task persuading elderly people to ask for what is rightly theirs.

Figures from Help the Aged show that £1.9bn in benefits goes unclaimed each year.

One third of pensioners entitled to Council Tax Benefit do not claim it.

"What we want to do is break down the stigma of benefits which has held some people back in the past," says the Work and Pensions Secretary, Andrew Smith.

It's your money, claim it. Andrew Smith MP, Work & Pensions Secretary

"The message is that the Pension Credit is an entitlement. It's your money, claim it."

But critics, including the Conservatives, say advertising is useless when the system is so complicated people will be put off claiming.

The ad launch was at a pensioners' coffee morning in south London, and even in such an organised environment, people Working Lunch spoke to were still baffled.

There are two elements to the pension credit, a minimum income guarantee and an additional payment which rewards people according to their savings.

But already Working Lunch viewers have told us that they will get nothing from the second element because of the way it is calculated.

As well as TV ads, there will be a mailshot to every pensioner household and information dispensed via local pension services.

Mr Smith also rejects claims that there will be a repeat of the tax credits fiasco, when people who had registered early did not get their money and information lines could not cope with the logjam.

"Pension credit works on tried and trusted technology - we're confident it will work well," he told Working Lunch.

"We've not brought it in as a big bang; we've encouraged a gradual take-up

"Thirdly we've recruited and very throughly trained the staff who are dealing with pensioners' enquiries and applications."