House of Commons Hansard Debates for 16 Jul 1993

Lady Olga Maitland : That was the clear implication of the hon. Gentleman's speech. As is said so often by Conservative Members, crime is crime, and must be condemned on that basis.

When I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley), I found myself scratching around to find signs of his commitment to stamping out social security fraud. In his 40-minute speech, he made only scant mention of that subject. He mentioned other issues such as entitlements and tax evasion. I take heart from the words of the words of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), who seems to have a genuine commitment. He made a statement to The Guardian which was published in January :

"It is the Labour party that is seen as in favour of mollycoddling people. We have to be tough with ourselves and ask why that has happened. We have to convince people that we are not a tax and spend party."

I congratulate him on making it clear that it is time to look at social security fraud and people who claim money which is not theirs by right.

I congratulate the Government on their genuine commitment to stamping out social security fraud, and on the many measures that they have taken to do so. The world seems to be divided into two categories : workers and shirkers. We appear to have become a nation of cheats who rob the needy. On average, every working person pays £13 every working day to support the jobless, the elderly, children, the sick and the disabled, but last year alone, a mind-boggling £500 million was creamed off--stolen by fraudsters. Some of them are petty criminals ; some have a misplaced belief that one small lie does not matter. Others form themselves into well- organised gangs--as happened in the case of the counterfeit books in Brixton, described in the papers today. Those books had a face value of £35 million. It is deeply disturbing to learn that there appears to have been an Irish nationalist connection with the case in Brixton. It is also disheartening to realise that, for every pound snatched from a needy person, someone who is desperate, frail or vulnerable loses--the money has gone to line the pockets of thieves and c shocked as they used to be--until the day comes when they want to claim benefits themselves, only to discover that the money has already been stolen from them. The cost of social security theft is reckoned to be the equivalent of a penny on income tax.

The time has come to put an end to this so-called national sport. Stealing from benefits agencies is the same as stealing from one's neighbour : the money all comes from the same source. The only difference is that the seemingly anonymous state benefits agencies, funded by the taxpayer, have now had enough.

The public are fighting these shabby people now, which is why I offer my admiration for the Government's

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determination to stamp out this pernicious scam and for their decision to allocate an additional £10 million to allow the Benefits Agency to deploy more manpower and improved computers, with more cross-referencing. This will help the agency to target money better and to save next year about £1 billion--money which can then be given to the people who deserve it. It is important to remember the vulnerable, not to defend these cheats, a practice which the Labour party, at least by implication, seems to go in for.

It is time to make it abundantly clear that the law will be enforced. People who think that they have been getting away with fraud for years are going to find it infinitely more difficult to do so in future.

My constituency of Sutton and Cheam--agreeable, pleasant and leafy-- attracted some fame the other day when I publicly drew attention to the problems of persistent juvenile crime--a problem which is reflected nationwide. In the same way, we are also vulnerable to cheats who put in fraudulent claims. I am often left speechless by the shirkers who come to my surgery and blatantly say that they cannot possibly work.

The other day, a barman told me that he was not working ; he was claiming income support. When I asked why he did not find another job in a bar, he told me that he was very selective about the kind of bar in which he wanted to work, and that he was quite happy to wait and to live on a minimal amount of money. How dare he say that? He is a shirker. Perhaps we should follow the Italian example and put an end to giving such people support when they have no intention of seeking work.

I also find it irritating beyond belief when a youngster aged 21 or so tells me that he is not working. I ask him whether he has any plans to work. He says that he cannot find any. I now have an answer for such people. I produce magazines and lists of employment agencies. I offer them the Evening Standard, and I tell them not to come back to see me for at least two weeks and then to tell me how they have got on.

I know that these youngsters can find work. The trouble is that they are selective and lazy and will not do menial labour, plenty of which is available. When my son comes down from university, he picks up two jobs in one day because he is prepared to do dirty work. I do not see why the young should consider themselves above what I call, good honest toil. As far as I can see, it is theft if they claim income support.

As for those who claim sickness benefit, I find it astonishing that people who seem perfectly healthy and capable of working at least in an office, if not in a strenuous job, should tell me, as a man did recently, "My wife is going out to work and I am claiming income support." I should like to know why that man is not going to work. The time has come to be much more rigorous

Mr. Bradley : Is the hon. Lady suggesting that GPs are falsely giving sick notes to sickness benefits claimants?

Lady Olga Maitland : I am suggesting that GPs are perhaps not careful enough when assessing people's health. Sometimes they become too sympathetic to a person's social circumstances and agree to give him a sick note. GPs need to be given clear guidelines on what is expected of them.

In my constituency, a tremendous amount of good work is being done to uncover fraudulent claims. North Surrey fraud office, covering an area from Croydon all the

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way to Mitcham and Morden, Wimbledon and Sutton, has saved £6.2 million that would otherwise have been stolen last year. A sub-office dealing with unemployment benefit saves about £6,000 a month by its vigilance. In Sutton, we have two full-time investigators who, last year, prevented the theft of £500,000. With a staff in north Surrey of 19, admittedly costing £500,000 a year, I reckon that the investment has been well worth it, given the size of the savings. Sutton does not have quite the same problems as some other areas, So I should like to turn my attention to Haringey, whose fraud squad is hard at work. It caught up with nearly £1 million-worth of fraudulent claims last year.

I am reminded of the occasion two years ago when I spent a week in a hostel for the homeless. I was doing a test case for a radio programme about living on income support--

Mr. Bradley : How much were you paid for it?

Lady Olga Maitland : Nothing.

Apart from one other person in that bed-and-breakfast accommodation, the 29 residents were all immigrants--from Turkey, Bangladesh, west Africa and the West Indies. I am not saying that they were frauds ; I do say that they came to this country because they knew that we would give them the most generous income support and a life style that they could not enjoy in their own countries. We should give that some attention, too.

I congratulate the Government on encouraging and giving incentives to local authorities to investigate fraudulent claims. The scheme is working well. Sutton has three full-time officers in the field, and the benefits of that are clear. Their experiences would be laughable if it were not for the tragedy of the mockery of the system. Moonlighting is rife and is almost seen as a game of touch and get away. The cheats are almost blatant in their efforts to claim money. Last week, I was told about a young man who drew up outside our local unemployment office in his work van which was emblazoned with the company name. He shot in, signed up and tried to shoot out. Another man on his way to work turned up in a works van with a ladder on top. More extraordinarily, a taxi driver parked his cab outside the benefits office and went in to sign on while his paying passenger waited in the back seat. In another case, although not in Sutton, a man answered a call on his mobile phone from his office while trying to claim.

Our fraud investigators have a sharp instinct for cheats, and can sense when things are not right. Is a jobless man a little bit too tidy and smart? Could he have just walked in from his office? How energetic and interested is he in seeking work? Is he available for interviews, and how many telephone calls has he made? Has he written many letters? The officers tell me that the busy man suddenly signs himself off the dole when requested to come for an interview when the appointment might conflict with his job. As for the requirement to attend a mandatory week's course, the long-term unemployed person suddenly discovers that he has found work after all.

It is also important to visit employers who take on itinerant casual labour. Such employers engage staff at unsociable hours which suit night security workers and minicab drivers, people who can still clock into the

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unemployment office during the day. Minicabs should be licensed in the same way as black cabs, so that their operators are exposed to the same disciplines. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Bendall) on graphically demonstrating the way in which they have abused the system.

Some people who try to claim support from the Benefits Agency should not do so at all. They are well funded, with money in the bank or the building society, although sometimes there is a

misunderstanding about what the money is for. I was told this week that it is not unusual for someone to say, "But that is my funeral money. Surely you cannot take that away from me." It should be carefully explained to people seeking income support that we are not trying to run them out of business or deprive them of their funeral money, but there is a difference between having money for one's funeral and claiming money to which one is not entitled.

We must crack down on scroungers, and especially on those who apply in several names. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Elletson), who is not in the Chamber at the moment, spoke about people who use fictitious names such as Count Dracula, Jack O'Nory, Donald Duck or Gary Lineker when claiming benefit.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the previous Secretary of State for Employment on her push to investigate alleged cheating. As a result, 50,000 people suddenly and mysteriously withdrew their claims. She uncovered a fraud in which people working abroad claimed unemployment benefit in Britain. Investigators discovered that groups of workers, mainly in construction, had been hired to work abroad and given time off every 13 weeks to return to Britain to sign on the dole and receieve unemployment benefit. I regret that that is possible if a claimant lives more than six miles from a benefit office.

It is disgraceful that employers have colluded in this way and turned a blind eye to employees who are on the dole. They have some responsibility, because they rely on the fact that people are claiming money in order to pay them lower wages. A London magazine distribution company had 1,000 false names on its books, ranging from William Shakespeare to William Caxton, Mickey Mouse and Nick Faldo. That went on for five years, but I am delighted to say that it ended with a conviction for false claims.

When I first entered Fleet street, some moons ago, there was a definite scam in the old-style printing industry. Printers clocked in using fictitious names, so that they could double-charge on social security. Fraud is rampant in the garment sweatshop industry. A series of visits recently resulted in 190 people withdrawing claims, with a saving to the Government of £330,000.

An investigation of part-time workers in the packaging, land work and perfume industries in the east midlands led to 303 people signing off the unemployment register. In the south-east, 733 people left the register, saving the state £670,000. In Scotland, more than £5 million was saved when investigations resulted in more than 7,000 people withdrawing claims.

It is appropriate that my hon. Friends, but not Opposition Members, should pay attention to new age travellers. It is offensive to see the way in which those people trample across our country and have the nerve to lay down the law according to their lights. The party is over for these hippies. From now on, they will not be able to get dole money in the free and easy way that they have

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obtained it in the past. They never show any intention of looking for work. The war on those dole cheats reached new heights when investigators learned that £55 million in benefits should not have been handed out in 1991. It was discovered that one in five of the 230,000 claimants was a cheat.

The challenge in dealing with cunning cheats who use a variety of well- tried and up-to-date rewarding techniques is depressing. Many claimants know the complex rules by heart, and are well versed in how to get round them. One rule that is exploited to the full is that unemployed people are entitled to seek work in their own field first, even if it is known that work is unlikely to become available. That gives the more imaginative claimant unlimited scope to come up with occupations that are disappearing or in which there are few readily available jobs.

On a broader level, I have found when talking to people who are on income support for genuine reasons that I have had to point out to them that, if they are in a certain job and the work is finished, they should look for work in another sector. There tends to be a rather blinkered approach. People must understand that, in their lifespans, they may have to change their careers two or three times. Mobility and flexibility have to be encouraged.

Housing benefit abuse has been well documented by Conservative Members. It is a scandal. In Sutton, we are exposed to the same problems of collusion between landlords and their tenants, as elsewhere. We hear of the landlord raising the rent, the tenant claiming the increased rent and the two splitting the profit. Sometimes, tenants make claims on fictitious addresses, arranging for money to be sent to other addresses before being sent on to them. I welcome the suggestion of a national cross-referencing index on multiple housing benefit claims to ensure that it is impossible for those cheats to get away with it.

To multiple addresses can be added multiple names. In the most bizzare case that I have heard of, a man had 37 different identities. That particularly happens with immigrants. It may be politically incorrect to touch on this, but I will identify their origins. They are largely west Africans, with highly complicated names. The trend in that section of the community should not be left unnoted. Our European friends are not much better. In the 1950s and 1960s, Italian immigrants flocked to this country, eager to work, to win a better life style and to contribute, and they succeeded. The country's presentation changed with the rise in the number of Italian restaurants, pizza bars and similar establishments, of which Sutton has an excellent supply. However, the situation has now changed. The Sunday Express ran a front page headline saying : "Crackdown on Euro Spongers-- Lilley moves to stop Britain being a soft touch on handouts."

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on that, and I congratulate a campaigning newspaper on doing a worthwhile task. It certainly had a case to report, and that case has been taken up in other newspapers. For instance, the Daily Mail ran a story saying :

"Rocco is Italian, idle and a heroin addict and you pay for him to live in comfort."

Rocco is aged 22, and his story is depressing. He came to this country. He knows that we are a soft touch. He picks up £67 a fortnight, and in addition, £90 a week for a shared room in a smartly decorated King's Cross bed-and-breakfast hotel--a useful sum. I can only describe him as

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a permanent loafer and a scrounger, but at least he gives the British welfare system high praise because it is easy to tap into. He says :

"In Italy, you would never get money if you haven't worked, and you would never get a flat that's paid for."

He simply cannot believe his luck. Furthermore, as a citizen from a fellow European Community member country, he is entitled to all the free medical treatment he needs, and he is a drug addict. He has access to the best possible NHS treatment, free housing, income support and the occasional crisis loans. Now, he teaches others how to milk the system.

Another Italian, Marco Redi, aged 26, has spent the past seven years sponging off our system claiming money from our social security system. He is a drug addict and has HIV and is getting the best possible treatment. He is blatant about his idleness and lack of willingness to seek work. He says :

"In Italy you get minimal help but here, it's very nice--I'm staying."

That is ironic, given that unemployed British nationals living in Germany, France and Spain get no financial help. Their

insurance-based systems do not pay out unless the claimant has been in work. In Italy, a Briton down on his luck gets only 20 per cent. of his salary, for just six months--and that is only if he can prove that he has been in work. No proof, no dole.

In short, thousands of foreigners have been coming to Britain and claiming millions of pounds of benefits. Therefore, I welcome the Government's announcement this week that they intend to close that loophole in the income support rules and bring to an end the scam from which 10,000 have benefited, to the tune of £17 million. Another area of abuse concerns single-parent families. People seem to be nervous of identifying that social grouping. However, whether or not it is politically correct, I do not hesitate to do so, because single-parent families, like everyone else, have responsibilities to society. They are not immune from and above the law. They must abide by the rules, and should not be given a free hand to cheat and to take money that is not theirs to claim.

One example of abuse is a single mother in her

housing-benefit-subsidised council flat who allows her boy friend, who may be in work, to move in with her. Technically, she is no longer single, and she should not claim the advantageous benefits available to single parents.

Often, the cheat begins unwittingly. The boy friend spends the odd night in her flat, then weekends, then he is there more often than not, and then he becomes a permanent fixture and part of the household. It is right that we should rigorously ensure that those women who are backed up by a partner are brought to book if they continue to claim benefits to which they are not entitled.

Mr. Bradley : Can the hon. Lady tell the House the precise number of single parents in the position that she described? Precisely how many claimants is she talking about, and what is her source for that statistic?

Lady Olga Maitland : I am unable, at this moment, to give the precise figures, but I shall provide the hon. Gentleman with them at a later date. The background to what I am describing has come from my local Benefits Agency office.

Another abuse of the system is fictitious desertion. A woman with children pretends that her husband or lover

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has deserted her, and then claims housing benefit, income support, one-parent benefit and council tax benefit. All told, that can add up to more than £100 a week free of tax. It is little wonder that some couples go to considerable lengths to pretend that their relationship is over. We must breed a new habit of honesty. Such flexible households are not above the law, and should not consider themselves free to claim money that is clearly not theirs.

Another deeply serious point, which has already been raised, is the extensive theft of benefit books. Last week, a man in Sutton was arrested for stealing cheques sent to tenants in a

multiple-occupation house. Officials say that that is just one small example of a large story. They estimate that the biggest losses come from stolen and counterfeit benefit books and girocheques. In north Surrey in the first quarter of 1991, more than 62,000 social security books were recorded as lost, stolen or destroyed. The head of the Benefit Agency's organised fraud unit said :

"It is easier to counterfeit a benefit book or girocheque than it is to go into a bank with a shotgun. There are fewer risks and the returns are as good."

In the past, a criminal having 100 stolen books could draw £8,000 a week, and might hand over only 5 per cent. of that to the accomplices who posed as claimants.

I congratulate the Government on acknowledging the seriousness of that problem, and my hon. Friend the Minister on demonstrating that much work has been done to make sure that such counterfeiting cannot occur in future. The message must go out to fraudsters and forgers that they can no longer get away with it. Benefit books will be like bank notes--forgeries will be easily detected in future, and those using them will be brought to book.

Clear guidance must be given to post offices and others who are confronted by a claimant who says, "My book has been stolen or mislaid. Can I have another ?" Double encashment has been a great loophole in the system, but it is now being closed.

A rational approach must also be taken to invalidity benefit. Can it be true that the number entitled to claim it has more than doubled in the past decade, from 700,000 to 1.5 million? Have we suddenly become a deeply sickly society? I believe that doctors have unwittingly been over-generous to their patients, in helping them to claim more than that to which they were entitled--bearing in mind that invalidity benefit is higher than unemployment benefit.

More than two thirds of the general practitioners in a survey by "Monitor Weekly" admitted that they had signed benefit forms for patients whom they knew not to be sick, or whose sickness did not prevent them from working. Most newspapers argue that changes should be made. On 12 June, The Times commented :

"The number of claimants has more than doubled, although there is no evidence of a corresponding increase in ill health."

The Daily Express asked :

"why should the benefit not be re-examined a stringent medical examination would seem only fair."

Although medical examinations are not as widespread as they might be, it is interesting to note that 50,000 claimants failed to report for a medical assessment last year, and consequently had their invalidity benefit stopped.

We must give GPs clear guidelines, and educate them in the fact that their job is to make a medical assessment and

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that they should not confuse their priorities. A GP may assess a crane driver with a history of heart attacks as unfit for work, but would that man be unfit for work behind a desk?

It is hard to understand how one GP managed to support the claims of a farmer who stole £36,000 by claiming invalidity benefit while doing three jobs. He was originally diagnosed as suffering from multiple sclerosis. I am glad that his condition was not too serious, but he managed to continue running his 30-acre farm, undertake sub-contracts and run a haulage business. His family--a wife, two sons and a daughter--and another farmer all colluded with him.

The examples are rife and rampant. One could go on for days describing cases of scamming, cheating and shirking. I congratulate the Government on their enormous determination to increase the search for more fraudulent claims. Their target of £60 million nationally on a £10 million investment in investigation resources is enormously worth while.

We must continue with our drive to encourage local authorities with incentives. There is no doubt that my Sutton council is encouraged, and that it has stretched its energies to seek our fraudulent claims, because it knows that it will get back a percentage to carry on with its work. The loopholes for abuse are still there. We must continue to modernise our information technology, and we must continue to update our cross- referencing to make it impossible for people to get away with fraud.

Above all, we must encourage a public spirit of coming forward with information about social security abuse. Information from the public already forms a major part of the basis on which investigations are made.

People should not feel quilty about giving information about their neighbours. They do not feel guilty if they report a bank robbery, and they do not feel quilty about reporting a major crime in another area. Why should they feel guilty about reporting that a neighbour is cheating? Who is more worthy of protection--the petty criminal neighbour or the needy victim who is prevented from getting the just help he needs? The money that is saved will help him even more. The issue raises the question of identity cards. If we know who everyone is, we can immediately tap into the computer and thus make fraud far more difficulty. Some people say that identity cards are another form of Big Brother. In certain situations, such cards are worth while. We are all surrounded by Big Brothers anyway, because we are on various computers and we carry various cards.

Identity cards would give us just the means of getting information for the benefit of us all. Employers should follow the French system of logging with the Department of Social Security the names of all those whom they have laid off. That would not cover everyone, but it would make it more difficult for people to claim benefit to which they were not entitled.

I may have seemed rather hard, and to be pushing those who carry out scams and who are shirkers. They are indeed a very unpleasant part of our national life. However, I recognise that the vast majority of those who claim social security are entirely genuine, and that a far smaller number are fraudulent. People who are honest and in genuine need have nothing to fear about claiming benefits. Those who claim them fraudulently must know that we shall find them wherever they are. We will catch them. We will make them repay their debts. We will make

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them go to court and, if necessary, they will be heavily fined, and may even pay the ultimate price of going to prison. It is morally wrong for people to steal, to lie, to cheat and to punish the very people whom society most wants to help.

12.48 pm

Mr. Richard Spring (Bury St. Edmunds) : It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland), who made a great and comprehensive speech which was thoroughly well researched. All of us in the Chamber enjoyed listening to her.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley) talked about a Jurassic tendency in the Conservative party. I have not yet seen the film, but I know that the Jurassic tendency applies to dinosaurs. Dinosaurs disappeared because of evolutionary improvement. Does evolutionary improvement account for the fact that the Labour Benches are so bereft of Members today? I can offer no other rational explanation.

Apart from Jurassic tendency, what is of great interest--I hope that the ladies and gentleman of the press will pick this up--is the marshmallow tendency : appealing on the outside but no substance in the middle. I am referring, of course, to the Members of the Liberal Democrat party who are so conspicuous by their absence today. On an issue of such importance, it is disgraceful that that party, which is always so sanctimonious about social security, should not be represented here today.

I imagine that the Liberal Democrats will be in Christchurch today talking about the need to increase pensions, benefits and so on, but the fact is that pensioners, like everybody else in receipt of benefits, suffer from fraud and abuse, and their investigation is part of the whole review of social security. Therefore, it is a great disappointment, which I hope will be noticed by everybody, that no Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament are here today. As I said earlier, it is the marshmallow tendency--looking good on the outside, but having no substance in the middle.

All hon. Members are in favour of a benefits system that protects the most vulnerable in our society--the sick, the disabled, the unemployed and the elderly--and an element of Conservative thinking is that there should be a safety net through which people cannot fall. We are spending £80 billion out of nearly £250 billion on social security. About £50 billion of the £250 billion is being borrowed and the amount of interest which has to be paid on that sum is increasing. If, therefore, there is any way of reducing public expenditure by cutting the fraudulent abuse of taxpayers' money, wherever it exists, we must do it.

Our duty in terms of social security is to help people in need. Every pound that is wasted or lost to fraud means less for those who are in real need. As the Under-Secretary of State pointed out, it is instructive and important to note that anti-fraud activity will save £1 billion in 1993-94--a substantial sum of money. I very much welcome the additional resources that are being made available to the Benefits Agency so that it can use modern technology to weed out false claims. The additional £10 million a year to be provided for this purpose is welcome. The fact that the

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anti-fraud yield was £341 million in 1990-91 and that it has risen to nearly £500 million in the last fiscal year is, again, to be welcomed.

I refer to the problem of bogus asylum seekers, to whom the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) referred. There are millions of potential economic migrants in the world. Outside Russia, 25 million Russians are having their civil liberties, including their language rights and political rights, removed. We see in eastern Europe the potential for economic migration on a substantial scale. Because of our generosity as a nation in always taking in people who are genuine refugees, something which we have done for hundreds of years, we act as a magnet to people who are in difficulty. While we have always welcomed genuine refugees, we now have the economic migrant. That is why all of us welcome the fact that the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Bill will clamp down on bogus asylum seekers and speed up the assessment process.

Two thirds of the asylum seekers arriving at our ports do so with no valid documents and might be suspect. The hon. Member for Islington, North said that fingerprinting was wrong, but it is at least a unique record of each individual. How else are we supposed to prevent abuse? Photographs and documents can be doctored and the solution advocated by the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues is in fact no solution at all. I hope that we shall continue to deal rigorously with a serious problem which can only grow worse as the years go by in view of the political turbulence all over the world. The traditional hospitality of the British people must not be abused. In a period of high unemployment all over Europe, we must protect British people, their jobs and their employment opportunities from bogus asylum seekers and others.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam graphically outlined the unparalleled generosity of the British taxpayer to other EC citizens. Newspapers and surveys by interested parties have uncovered enormous potential financial abuse. Britain is unique in that someone arriving by ferry can be given DSS leaflets in a number of European languages to tell him how to claim benefit. We are the only country to provide that service, which is almost an encouragement. the insurance programme. The only two countries in which such benefit is automatic is Belgium and Ireland, and it lasts for three months. We must compare our social security set-up with that on the continent because many people involved in this area believe that our system leads to abuse as people come here with the intention of claiming benefit.

What always amuses my hon. Friends is that if the Labour party can attack this country or cite an aspect of life in another country which is better than ours it will unhesitatingly do so. I have heard the chandeliers in the Moscow underground being used as proof that Moscow had a better public transportation system, even under the old creaky communist system. Labour Members often cite France as an example of a country with a superior social security system. However, British nationals going to France receive no housing benefit. That is in contrast to newspaper reports which show clearly that in London housing benefits of up to £300 a week are being paid to EC nationals. That is an abuse of the system. British and other

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EC citizens going to France get absolutely nothing and information provided by the French equivalent of the DSS is provided only in French.

Germany is often supposed to have a pension system that is superior to ours, but only people who have worked and paid social security contributions for at least 12 months in the preceding three years can receive unemployment benefit. Needless to say, information is available only in German. By contrast, Denmark has a more rigorous system, and there are limits. It has a generous unemployment benefit system--people get 90 per cent. of their previous wage. Once again, EC nationals cannot qualify unless they have been living in Denmark for 12 months and have paid into the state unemployment fund. Needless to say, information about that is available only in Danish.

In Spain, there are no payments and information is available only in Spanish. In Portugal and Luxembourg, there are no benefits either. As I said, the only two countries in which there is something parallel to our system are Belgium and Ireland and payments continue for only three months.

There is substantial abuse because of the comprehensive social security benefits that are available to EC residents who come into the United Kingdom. However, I am glad that that has been tightened up and, undoubtedly, my hon. Friend the Minister will allude to that later. In the United Kingdom, proof of nationality must be provided. At the local DSS office, the interviewee must show that he or she has completed a national insurance record. That is helpful.

Another matter that must be examined is whether the rent is reasonable. If it is shown that rent is reasonable, 100 per cent. housing benefit is paid. What is the definition of "reasonable"? It is arbitrary. In central London, rent can be expensive and, therefore, costly to the taxpayer. Therefore, probably and potentially, an indeterminate amount of money is given to those individuals to the disadvantage of genuine British claimants. I am glad that that has been tightened up, but more could be done in that direction. My hon. Friend the Minister talked about involving local authorities and sharing in the savings from fraud. I commend him on those remarks, because the new set-up announced in April gives local authorities an incentive to be involved. Local authorities keep 15 per cent. of the savings generated and, through anti-fraud efforts, that will rise above a threshold to 20 per cent. in 1993-94 and 17.5 per cent. in 1994-95. The reason for the rise is to give a boost and encouragement to effect those savings. Out of that will come a total saving of some £185 million, of which £45 million will usefully be retained by local authorities.

I turn my attention to the question of students. I have recently visited Japan and Taiwan and I was delighted with the number of students coming to the United Kingdom from those countries. Of course, they are areas of considerable economic growth. If we examine the history of Britain, students coming here have then returned to their home countries and played an important part in the lives of their nations. We should continue to welcome students for as long as we have excellent universities--and, of course, we shall continue to have them in the future.

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In 1991, which is the last year for which full figures are known, 200,000 students from outside the EC came to Britain. While that is excellent news for the reason that I suggested-- enhancing British prestige and increasing British influence in their home countries--it is clear from newspaper reports that there is abuse. Students working part time have certainly claimed income support in the past. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam referred to identity cards. I should like my hon. Friend the Minister to give an assurance on that, because, apparently, in student cities and towns--expecially in London-- there is a roaring trade in bogus EC identify cards. It is difficult to determine the difference, for example, between a Colombian and a Spaniard, and other nationalities. That places considerable strains on the system and it is abused.

Another matter with regard to people arriving here is the increasing number of people who seem to appeal to the Home Office for a review of their conditions of entry to the United Kingdom to gain income support. While the Home Office is reviewing that, benefit is still paid. My understanding is that 10,000 people from abroad will not now receive income support, which involves savings of £17 million and is very welcome. However, asylum seekers will continue to receive benefit while the Home Office processes their cases under the urgent case rules. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will keep that process under constant review to ensure that it is not abused. The scourge of the new age travellers, happily, has not afflicted the part of the world that I am privileged to represent, Suffolk and East Anglia. Under the actively seeking work test introduced in 1989, real attempts are now being made to address this problem. My constituents were very alarmed recently when a gipsy horse fair was held in my constituency. Happily, it passed off without major incident, but there was a considerable fear that a whole range of different individuals, including new age travellers, would arrive. It is right that individuals who clearly have no intention of working--whom, in the past, DSS officials have bent over backwards to help--should now have to take on personal responsibilities and that their relationship to work should be more clearly defined. The hon. Member for Islington, North made an interesting and curious speech. It is always comforting for my hon. Friends and myself to know that the Labour party has such individuals propagating a certain point of view. The whole thrust and ethos of his speech was less appropriate to a debate about social security fraud and abuse than to a national heritage debate. Such a speech, reflecting such attitudes, should be inscribed, illuminated, and put up next to a famous tomb in a cemetery not far from his constituency, where there are more specialist millionaires than the bed -and-breakfast millionaires to whom he constantly alluded.

It is clear that there is a feeling in this country that we have a comprehensive welfare system, which spreads far and wide and provides help to many people. It has been open to abuse, but there is a sentiment in my constituency and elsewhere that fraud and abuse must stop. Much of the evidence is clear and has been provided in the courts ; much is anecdotal. The I-can-get-away-with-it mentality is deeply offensive to the British people, who are very fair-minded and have a liberal disposition to those who are disadvantaged for whatever reason.

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