---

Social Security (Loss of Benefit) Amendment Regulations 2010

My Lords, I am grateful for the support that all noble Lords who have spoken have given to the regulations. I shall try to deal with each of the points raised. I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Freud, when he said that this is not only a question of justice and stopping people taking from the system unfairly, it is about retaining public confidence in the system. That is important. He asked specifically about the extent to which fraud occurred in working-age benefits. The latest figures to March 2009 show fraud at 0.8 per cent of all benefit expenditure: £1.1 billion, as I explained. A breakdown by type of benefit—working age, pension, and so on—is published by DWP. I do not have those figures to hand, but I will be happy to provide them to the noble Lord and other noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. The noble Lord also asked about what was happening about error: are we administering the system more effectively? We are now applying the same rigour to error as we do to fraud. Official error overpayments are at their lowest level since 2002-03, and the latest statistics show that overpayments due to official error have fallen, despite a background of significantly increased work pressures faced by the department and local authorities during the economic downturn. He again turned to the issue of undeclared income, which we debated in our recent deliberations on the Child Poverty Bill. I am not sure that there is much we can add to that debate today. Clearly, the issue of tax evasion is important and the Government have put significant resources into trying to clamp down on it. However, it remains for us all to be vigilant, just as we need to be vigilant around benefit fraud. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, again supported these regulations and I am grateful for that. She referred, as did the noble Lord, Lord Laming, to the fact that we know that significant amounts of benefit are still not claimed. Again, I do not have that data to hand, but we discussed it on the Child Poverty Bill. For one more recent order, I think that we put some statistics on the record. I am happy to do that again in due course. From recollection, those benefits where there is the lowest take-up are pension credit, council tax benefit and housing benefit. On the latter two, people often do not realise that those benefits can be claimed when you are in work as well as out of work. The Government have done a lot to focus attention on that, particularly by enabling claims for pension credit, council tax benefit and housing benefit to be made in one telephone call that covers them all. We are also looking at new ways of using the administrative data that we have, specifically to try and target people who we believe might be entitled to council tax benefit and housing benefit. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, referred to interviews under caution. My information is that the letter which asks them to attend states that they can bring somebody with them. If the noble Baroness has any examples where that is not happening, I will be very happy to look into it. There is also a leaflet explaining those issues. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, asked about recoveries of overpayments. The data which I have to hand for 2008-09 are that we have recovered something like £281 million, while £286.4 million has been written off. Obviously, there is still some way to go to recover the full amount due. The level and rate of recovery are limited as well, because it is generally, if not always, being recovered from people on low incomes. Reverting to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, there are two separate interviews. In one, they are under caution and in another they are offered a caution, so a two-stage process is involved. I believe that that has dealt with each of the points that were raised. If not, I will be happy to try and have another go if noble Lords prompt me on it. Subject to that, however, perhaps we might move to acceptance of these orders. Motion agreed.