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Housing Benefit
6. Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East): If he will make a statement on the housing benefit verification framework. [107192]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Angela Eagle): The verification framework is a key part of our overall strategy to root out fraud and error in housing benefit. The framework is a good practice guide that forms a platform for secure and accurate administration by defining the evidence that should be gathered to support a claim for housing benefit or council tax benefit. It also defines the frequency of subsequent checks during the life of a claim. As of 28 January, 226 local authorities had received funding to implement the framework.
Dr. Iddon: Various housing organisations in Bolton have expressed concern about how the housing benefit verification framework is operating. For the record, will my hon. Friend assure us that no one will be denied housing benefit--hence accommodation--because he or she cannot produce two bona fide forms of identification? Will she assure us that benefit will not be stopped after a housing officer has attempted a second visit, having failed to make contact on the first, particularly when it occurs as early as 7.30 am to 8.30 am?
Angela Eagle: The idea behind the verification framework is that it will secure the gateway to benefit, which was too lax in the past. That involves proof of identity. However, we have improved the framework in the light of its live operation, not by reducing security but by ensuring that we fit in with people's life styles. For example, hostel dwellers do not often have two proofsof identification, and we have made adjustments accordingly. However, we do not want to make housing benefit security any worse, and the verification framework is a big improvement. We want all local authorities to put it into effect.
Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet): Last year, there were nearly 250,000 cases of housing benefit fraud, but only 700 successful prosecutions. Given those figures nearly three years after the Government came to office, how can the hon. Lady continue to say that Ministers will be tough on housing benefit fraud?
Angela Eagle: We inherited a difficult system fromthe Conservative Government who fragmented the administration of housing benefit to 409 different local
authorities with which we must co-operate. We realised that there was a problem with prosecution, and we have launched prosecution pilots in which we lend departmental lawyers to local authorities in order to pursue cases. We are tightening up.
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington): My hon. Friend is aware that I have been doing some work on reform of the housing benefit system and on the relationship between rents paid and taxes paid by landlords. Will she tell me how that work is proceeding in the Department?
Angela Eagle: As always, my hon. Friend is most ingenious and has come up with some very interesting ideas. I assure him that the Department is taking a close look at them.
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley): Is the Minister aware of a case in which a person was caught claiming for 43 children and 11 houses? He was an illegal immigrant and was jailed for three and a half years. Will she stress to people who are cheating the system that they cheat not only the Government but those people who could also be receiving benefits, if the system were not being fleeced as it is? As there are a reported 70,000 asylum seekers flooding into the country, will she reassure the country that, whereas the Home Office seems to have lost its grip on those people, the Department of Social Security will ensure that they are not fleecing the system?
Angela Eagle: As always in this matter, the hon. Gentleman makes a disgraceful contribution. I assure him that we take fraud extremely seriously. He proves that by citing a case that was prosecuted successfully and in which the person was jailed. Prosecutions are going up. We shall not tolerate fraud in the social security system; we work night and day to ensure that we minimise successful fraud.
7. Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley): What representations he has received regarding time taken in dealing with housing benefit claims. [107193]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Angela Eagle): The Department regularly receives correspondence about local authority administration of housing benefit. Working with local authorities, we aim to transform the delivery of housing benefit so that it is faster, more accurate and more secure against fraud and error.
Mr. Pike: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. We acknowledge the actions that have already been taken. However, does she agree that the housing benefit system remains complex and that, although a verification process is needed, many councils are struggling with the system and many people have to wait far too long? That is extremely worrying, especially for elderly people who have never been in debt and who think that they are in debt although in fact they are not. Will she ensure that councils are able to deal with those claims speedily, thus removing such anxieties?
Angela Eagle: We always have to find a balance between securing the gateways to the benefit and speed. Some local authorities experienced a decline in their
ability to process housing benefit forms when they adopted the verification process. However, because of the co-operation that we are receiving over live running, I assure my hon. Friend that we aim to get right the balance between accuracy and speed.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West): Given the critical importance of that benefit, the figures cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet(Sir S. Chapman) and the importance that the Government attach to the benefit, why have no proposals for its reform been put to the House during the lifetime of this Government? When can we expect them?
Angela Eagle: We have introduced many reforms to the housing benefit system. For example, we set up the benefit fraud inspectorate, which is currently examining every local authority among the top 30 housing benefit spenders. We have also introduced changes to weekly benefit savings to encourage prosecutions. Almost all local authorities have remote-access terminals, which give access to Benefit Agency records so that they can make cross-checks. We are introducing the electronic transfer of data between the BA and local authorities, beginning this month. We have set up a pilot to examine the single gateway to the benefit system. We have done much; the hon. Gentleman will have to wait a little longer for the Green Paper.
Benefits Payment
8. Mr. Phil Hope (Corby): If he will make a statement on the impact upon people in rural areas of proposals to computerise the benefits payment system. [107195]
The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Alistair Darling): About half of new pensioners and more than half the people in receipt of child benefit prefer to have their benefits paid into their bank accounts. However, for some people, especially in rural areas, receiving their money in cash at the post office is very important, and we want that choice to remain. So, even after the move to paying benefits directly into bank accounts, from 2003, people in rural areas will still be able to collect their cash at the local post office if they want to do so.
Mr. Hope: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. People who live in east Northamptonshire, a rural part of my constituency, have been greatly concerned about press reports that were not the same as his reply. Will he assure me that the Government have joined-up thinking in this matter and that they recognise the vital social, as well as commercial, functions of post offices? Will he further assure me that in future we shall see a halt to the decline of services in rural areas that began under the Tories, and that there will be a real rural revival?
Mr. Darling: My hon. Friend is right--doing nothing and sticking with the present system would be an absolute disaster for post offices, because more and more of those who are coming into the benefit system, especially pensioners and people receiving child benefit, are asking to have their money paid direct into a bank or building society account. That is their right, and there is nothing that the Government can or should do about that.
We have also ensured that, for the first time, the Post Office has the capability to compete with the banks--it can now get access to the money necessary to enable it to pay out cash to its customers. When we came to office, the Post Office could not do so because the necessary investment had not been made. The previous Government had no intention of doing anything about it, and instead were going to privatise the entire post office network.
We are ensuring that people will have a choice after 2003, and that the Post Office can compete with banks in a way that simply is not possible at the moment.
Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden):
Will the Secretary of State confirm that he received from officials the same advice that I received about the impact of moving to compulsory ACT--compulsory payment of benefits through the banks--namely, that it would lead to the collapse of the post office network across the country, that the only way to prevent that collapse would be to introduce a subsidy, that such a subsidy would absorb a large part of the savings that it was hoped to make in the first place, and that the net effect would be a minimum saving but maximum hardship for old, disabled and young people, and that communities would be destroyed? Will he think again about this disastrous policy?
Mr. Darling:
The right hon. Gentleman was a member of a Conservative Government--and he belonged to the right-wing, doctrinaire part of that Government--who wanted to sell off the whole of the post office network, which would have put many post offices at risk--so he has no credibility as a defender of the Post Office.
I do not know what advice the right hon. Gentleman was given because, of course, we do not see the advice given to previous Administrations. However, he must have been told that the present system--under which the cost of paying a benefit by girocheque is some 79p an item, whereas the cost of paying it direct into a bank account is less than 1p--is unsustainable. He must also have been told that making payments by means of order books and giros is extremely expensive because of the amount of money lost through fraud, and that therefore that is also unsustainable. The only way to ensure that the post office network survives is to ensure that it gets investment--something that he opposed when he was a member of the Conservative Government who wanted to sell it off.
We are giving the Post Office the additional investment necessary to ensure that people have a choice about whether they receive their benefit in cash at a post office or through a bank or building society. The alternative to what we are doing is to maintain a system whereby we continue to pay benefits using order books that are by and large unchanged since the ration books of the second world war. That is clearly unsustainable and nonsensical.
Mr. Bob Blizzard (Waveney):
Will my right hon. Friend join me in condemning certain newspapersand certain Opposition politicians who, by their scaremongering, are serving only to undermine public confidence in sub-post offices, in spite of the fact that the Government and my right hon. Friend today have clearly stated that cash benefits will still be available atpost offices? Does he agree that comments to the contrary serve only to frighten elderly people, and that those who
Mr. Darling:
The point that those who differ with us on our policy should remember is that more and more people--whether we like it or not--are asking to have their benefits paid into their bank accounts. Therefore, if we did nothing, the post office network would suffer, and anyone who believes that that is a sensible policy needs his head looking at.
The right thing to do is to ensure that people have a choice, because we believe in choice. People should be allowed to choose where they receive their benefit or pension. However, we also need to ensure that the necessary investment is made in the Post Office. That did not happen, and the Post Office paid a heavy price for the doctrinaire opposition to addition investment shown by the Conservative privatisers who now sit on the Opposition Benches.
Mr. Alasdair Morgan (Galloway and Upper Nithsdale):
Will the Secretary of State guarantee that, in any departmental publicity leaflets, equal emphasis will be given to both choices, including the post office choice, and that the option to retain payments through a post office will not be buried away in the small print of the leaflets?
Mr. Darling:
I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. A poster campaign is being mounted jointly by the Benefits Agency and the Post Office. Posters and leaflets explaining the new system should appear in every post office throughout the land to give people the reassurance that they will have a choice as to whether they receive their money through the post office or their bank or building society.
Mr. Lawrie Quinn (Scarborough and Whitby):
Is my right hon. Friend aware of the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at the end of last week in which he pointed out that 3,000 extra cashpoint machines will be available in rural post offices? Many people will want to receive their benefits through the new system and, despite the scaremongering of Conservative Members, that will add to the renaissance of services in rural areas.
Mr. Darling:
My hon. Friend is right. The Post Office already has an alliance with, I think, three banks and offers banking facilities as a result of that. I fail to understand the policy of the Conservative party. I know that it is conservative in every sense of the word, but its recipe is to do absolutely nothing and to stick with a system that is not sustainable. That is nonsensical and it would also cost the DSS substantial sums in administrative costs and in money lost through fraud and error. Surely nobody in their right mind could defend that, but let us hear what the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) has to say.
Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry):
I begin by assuring the Secretary of State that I feel very much in my right mind. I am sure that he would wish to join me in acknowledging that the effects of rural transport difficulties are compounded for those who are elderly or who have disability problems. While we are discussing states of
Although the Secretary of State has given assurances, does he not accept that, in the form that he has given them, they are merely bland, imprecise and uncosted? Does he not understand that they will cut very thin ice with an elderly or disabled person who wishes to go to his or her local sub-post office, finds that its business has become uneconomic because of the significant loss of benefit payments that will result from the changes that the Secretary of State has initiated, and that it has simply shut its doors--so that that person has nowhere to go?
Mr. Darling:
The hon. Gentleman will no doubt reflect on the fact that rural transport was significantly run down by the previous Conservative Government, principally because of the deregulation of bus services that took place in the 1980s when Mr. Ridley was the Secretary of State responsible for such matters.
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