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Welfare Reform Bill

My hon. Friend has made a very important point and I look forward to working with her to ensure that those benefits are realised, particularly in her constituency. I now have the answer to the question that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) asked about the severe disablement premium: people in receipt of it can volunteer for pathways. I am grateful to her and to my hon. Friends for their interventions; it is because there have been so many of them that I have now been able to deal with the hon. Lady’s point. The Bill contains provisions dealing with fraud, and we have decided to go further in this area. Given that some 50 per cent. of fraud against a local benefit also involves fraud against a national benefit, it is crucial that we lift the restrictions that prevent up to 2,000 local authority investigators from tackling the full extent of the benefit fraud that they encounter. Clauses 43 to 45 address those concerns. Rights and responsibilities lie at the heart of this Bill, and nowhere is the abuse of those responsibilities more blatant than in benefit fraud. Clause 46 will extend the ““two strikes”” rule for repeat offences, so that people who commit a second benefit offence within five years of their first one can have their benefit withdrawn. Part 4 of the Bill contains a number of smaller but important measures to correct anomalies in the—