Pension Credit -- 10 per cent for the bureaucrats

Steve Webb and the LibDems are briefing about the cost of delivering the Pension Credit. Apparently it costs £4 per claimant per week which is about ten per cent of the average amount claimed and more than is actually paid to 65,000 of the claimants.

That does not include the people who don't claim it because it is so complicated or because it feels like charity. Ten per cent is an astonishing figure. It ought to be enough to discredit the system even if the investment disincentives implicit in the means testing were not an even more serious problem.

It would be nice if Mr. Webb were to share his research on this matter with us but I can't see it on his site.