The Deserted Wife's Benefit scheme, introduced in 1973, was closed to new applications with effect from 2 January 1997, when One Parent Family Payment was introduced. Deserted Wife's Benefit was payable to a woman deserted by her husband, based on the social insurance contributions paid by the wife or her husband. Currently, the scheme has 4,554 recipients.
As a closed scheme, remaining Deserted Wife’s Benefit claims are stopped for a variety of reasons including: when the woman remarries, commences cohabitation, passes away, or transfers to another social protection payment.
The table below provides the number of claims stopped, per year, for the past 5 years and to date in 2023:
Year
|
No. claims stopped
|
2023 (to date)
|
92
|
2022
|
283
|
2021
|
381
|
2020
|
347
|
2019
|
422
|
2018
|
263
|
I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.