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Benefits Simplification

I am not an expert, but I do lead a sad life. That cannot be good or right. Social Security Advisory Committee people tear their hair out at proposals that are always well intentioned but frequently work to the detriment of everybody. The Department has been tremendously successful at driving down client fraud and error. However, most client fraud begins as innocent omission and failure to declare something. Suddenly, clients realise two years down the track, because they have talked to somebody else, ““Oh, I should have told them that, but nobody's noticed, so I'll carry on.”” There are seven different earnings disregards, depending on the benefit someone receives—for example, whether someone is a lone parent or part of a couple and so on. If people are told that they can earn £20 without telling anybody, they think that that is correct. The figure is, indeed, £20 for lone parents. Strangely, it is £20 for income support, but £25 for housing benefit. The same individual could receive two different benefits, with two different levels of disregard. It is therefore easy to understand how omission starts. However, at some point, omission translates into serious client error/fraud, which gets extremely expensive over time for the Department. It always generates overpayment, most of which, in the big cases, the Department never recovers. I have experienced cases of overpayment of £40,000 and £50,000. The individual's financial circumstances mean that it is repaid at a rate of £5 a week. When that person dies about 30 years later, £20,000 is still owed. It is in nobody's interest to reach that stage. Changes of circumstance make an impact on individuals, and there is no single point of contact where people can give information and everything is done. The four major changes of circumstances are: change of address; acquiring a partner; losing a partner; getting a job, and having a child. A highly successful joint pilot between the Department, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and others has taken place in Wallsend—I am sure that the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform will comment on it later—whereby an individual tells one person about a change of circumstances and all the relevant people are notified. In this day and age, we should be able to do that for everybody. I understand that the pilot is being rolled out in other places, but the sooner it happens nationally, the better. It is ironic that one of the difficulties is data protection legislation. With the best intentions, successive Governments have passed legislation that prevents one Department from sharing data with another. Much of that difficulty has been removed, but some of it remains. The general public think that that is stupid. To them, the Government are not a series of separate Departments but a single entity—the Government are the Government.