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Benefits Simplification

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not my place to defend the verification process, but I shall make a case for its defence. The process threw up an incredible amount of fraud in the housing benefit system. One of my bugbears about social security legislation is that an awful lot of it is aimed at the 0.2 per cent. who wish to defraud the system, which inconveniences the 99.8 per cent. who find themselves in difficult circumstances, want a bit of help while they sort themselves out and then move on. An awful lot of regulation could simply be deleted from the statute book. Let us not forget that such complexity impacts on customers, staff and advisers such as citizens advice bureaux and whatnot. I shall just make a little observation at this point—anyone who claims to be an expert in social security legislation is either a liar, or they lead a very sad life.