5. Takes note of the EDPS's reply to the effect that because of its small size, it is assisted by the Office for the Administration and Payment of Individual Entitlements (PMO) in handling the social allowances files, that the information relating to family and dependent child allowances is updated by the PMO once a year on the basis of specific forms addressed to the staff concerned through the EDPS, and that the social allowances are kept up-to-date on the basis of the information gathered through these forms. Welcomes the EDPS's intention to improve the monitoring of information relevant to the social allowances in view of the recommendation of the Court of Auditors, and invites the EDPS to report on the ...[+++]action taken in its Annual Activity Report;

Disability Living Allowance (Disability Living Allowance and Disability Working Allowance Act 1991 of 27 June 1991, Section 1, and Disability Living Allowance and Disability Working Allowance (Northern Ireland) Order 1991 of 24 July 1991, Article 3)

Unfortunately the ‘exportability’ of five non-contributory benefits – namely, child care allowance, disability allowance and care allowance for disabled children, disability living allowance, attendance allowance and carer’s allowance – remains controversial.

A particular point to mention is that the Council did not accept all of the Commission's proposal to revise the list of entries in Annex IIa. The Council does not agree with the inclusion of these particular benefits: Child care allowance (Finland); Disability Allowance and care allowance for disabled children (Sweden); Disability Living Allowance; Attendance Allowance; Carer's Allowance (United Kingdom).

(2) The second strand of policy followed by Member States refers to the possibility to combine the receipt of the benefit entitlement with earnings from work (labour supply channel) by allowing the following: (i) combination of part-time or full-time job with partial unemployment benefit or unemployment assistance (Spain, Ireland, Portugal) or with a wide range of other social benefit schemes such as normal and specific unemployment benefits, RMI, lone-parent allowance, ASS and disabled adult allowance (France); and (ii) incentives to start-up business or to encourage self-employment by allowing to receive the unemployment benefit in a ...[+++]lump sum payment (Spain).

Clearly some people are profiting from the opportunity to indulge in another budget bidding race which is particularly mistimed when the convergence criteria for EMU are imposing a very strict slimming regime on the national budgets.