The Government have approved the payment of a Christmas bonus this year of 70 per cent of normal weekly payments. This year, for the first time, all qualified recipients will receive a minimum bonus of £20. The cost of the bonus this year is £33 million which is an increase of £2 million on last year.
The Christmas bonus will be paid to pensioners and other people receiving long term social welfare and health payments including the elderly, widows, lone parents, the long term unemployed and people in receipt of the carer's allowance. In all over 1.14 million people will benefit i.e. 685,000 recipients and their 456,000 dependants.
The Christmas bonus was introduced originally in 1980 for elderly and other pensioners. It was subsequently extended to include the long term unemployed in receipt of long term unemployment assistance. Persons in receipt of invalidity pension are also covered for the bonus. There are no proposals at present to extend the Christmas bonus to other categories of recipients. The cost of extending the bonus to the 27,000 people in receipt of disability benefit for 12 months or more would be £1.3 million.