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Lord Carter: Perhaps the Minister can assist on one aspect. Presumably, when the DSS agrees its budget with the Treasury every year in the public expenditure round it must include a figure which represents its expectation of the take-up of benefit. I remember reading that almost invariably the take-up has undershot the estimate. What is the figure that the DSS persuades the Treasury that it will pay and how much does it actually pay?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: I am not sure that I have to hand the precise figures to answer the noble Lord's question. Certainly, it is true that we tend to underestimate what the demand will be in the subsequent year. We always honour our obligations and pay up. We hope that one of the advantages of the BA/POCL system, the automated card system and new payments system will be that we will be in a better position with more accurate information to make more accurate forecasts in order to get the calculations right. I am trying to work out how that advances the noble Lord's argument. He suggests that more people will apply than we believe will apply. I do not believe that it is anything like that.
Lord Carter: If the noble Lord relies on everything that is said in this Chamber to advance the argument he will be very disappointed. I remember reading that the department estimates the expenditure on benefits. Obviously, to do that it must estimate the percentage take up. However, I believe that the actual take up is almost invariably less than that. Therefore, within the budget of the DSS a greater sum is allocated than is spent on those benefits.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: It is some time since I looked at it. However, I believe that the opposite is true. The accusation has been made against us that we invariably underestimate how much money we will need in the following year. I believe that that is the exact opposite of what the noble Lord has just said.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I believe that there is a difference between level of claims and the demographic effects on the DSS budget. The Minister's reply was rather more diffident than we have come to expect of him, possibly because he believes that we have a better case than his brief allows him to express.
I should like to pick up two particular points referred to by the Minister. First, he said that this was a complicated activity, that it would not do what we said it would do and therefore it was not worth doing. Secondly, he said that in any case the Government were already doing it so nothing further was necessary. There was a minor inconsistency between those two positions, but I do not suppose that that will embarrass the Minister. Dealing first with the question of benefit entitlement, no one on this side of the Chamber suggests that overnight with information technology complete
take up can be achieved. What we are saying is that with consent and within the framework of the law--which is what this Bill gives us the opportunity to do--we can use information technology to make considerable inroads into the very real levels of under-claiming that I tried to identify from the Government's own DSS statistics.For example, council tax benefit is claimed by approximately 5.5 million people annually. If when the particular form is filled in the person is asked for his consent to use that information for other benefits, research suggests that it will permit us to identify at least 70 per cent.--no more--of those pensioners who currently do not claim income support to which they are entitled, because the structures of those benefits are analogous and so there is an obvious difference in capital rules. That will allow us to passport them in a fairly straightforward way without sending them through the hoops, so graphically described by my noble friend Lady Gould, of further form filling with all of its attendant intimidation, complexities and problems.
Without claiming that IT can deliver 100 per cent., we suggest that this Bill provides us with an opportunity to tackle and identify not only the very real problems of fraud or error but the very real problems of under-claiming. We had hoped that the Minister might have accepted that IT was intelligent enough (if I may put it that way) to allow that to happen.
The Minister's second argument was that the Government were already doing everything reasonably possible to make benefits known and therefore for anyone who did not claim it was a matter of personal choice. That is rubbish, and the Minister should know it. This comes from a government that has dropped home visits which are one sure way of ensuring that people, particularly pensioners who may be housebound and fairly frail, know what they are entitled to. This was a government that dropped the help line and in the same month opened the fraud line. Why? The reason was that too many people--three million a year--were using it.
The Government have the effrontery to say that they are doing everything possible. This is a government that under Project Change has cut the number of offices so that one has to collect or find out the details of one's benefit by telephone. One knows that on average one claimant in three does not have a telephone. Therefore, potential claimants have to queue up at a public telephone, possibly in the rain, and put coins into it, with their toddlers in tow. We then expect them to obtain accurate information about their level of benefit. They may be kept on hold for 20 minutes because the benefit line is engaged. This is a government that tell us that they are doing everything possible when they have made this and many other changes that have created a series of hurdles for people who are among the most vulnerable, least self-confident and least educated to overcome.
On a personal note, if my noble friend Lady Gould, who is as competent and able a woman as the Committee will know, has difficulty in handling these forms on behalf of a member of her family, and is sufficiently aware that she must obtain advice as to the
accuracy of the information she provides when filling them in, how can an old age pensioner or someone for whom English is not a first language, or someone with other kinds of difficulties, be expected to cope? We should be using information technology not just to deter fraud--which we should--but as a window of opportunity to reach those who should claim, would like to claim but do not claim for a mixture of reasons, not simply as a matter of personal choice. The reason may be fear, intimidation, ignorance or the fact that the person is housebound.We should use information technology and rejoice in the opportunity it gives us to ensure that the welfare state helps those who need it as well as removing benefit from those who do not. I am disappointed in the Minister's response, but I am sure we shall return to this issue. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Carter moved Amendment No. 7:
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 7 and I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 25 and 34. All the amendments deal with the same point. They are to allow information supplied to be used in assessing the suitability of staff employed to administer housing and council tax benefit.
Amendment No. 7 relates to Clause 1, which deals with information held by tax authorities. Amendment No. 25 relates to Clause 2 which deals with other government information--passports, immigration, emigration, nationality or prisoners, or any other matter which is prescribed--with which we shall be dealing in a later amendment. Amendment No. 34 relates to Clause 3 which deals with housing or council tax benefit.
If accepted the amendments would ensure that government departments and local authorities would be able to use the information obtained under the Bill to assess the suitability of applicants for posts concerned with the administration of social security benefits. There is some evidence that organised fraudsters are deliberately targeting those types of employment to give them access to inside information which would assist them in the commission of a fraud.
The amendments are intended to explore the extent to which information that government departments make available under the Bill could be used to assess the suitability of applicants for posts in the administration of social security benefits. The scope of the amendments reflects the concerns about which we have been told by local government, that organised and criminal elements have targeted the benefit system by having people recruited into the administration of, for example, housing benefit. Local authorities which feel that they are the targets of such organised criminal activities want to take prudent measures to protect themselves against such infiltration. It is clearly a major problem for the system if there is insider fraud as well as fraud perpetrated by landlords and others outside.
We can all agree that if people in the system are not of the highest integrity, obviously problems can arise. They could obtain and use data for the wrong purpose. They are also best placed to benefit financially from making up phantom claims and claimants. The amendments make it clear that data could be used to assess the suitability of staff employed, as I have said, in the administration of those benefits.
I do not attempt to minimise the concerns which such an approach must raise. It is in the nature of clampdowns on housing benefit and other fraud that we create a category of people in the statistics who have allegedly committed fraud, but who have been charged with and convicted of no crime. It is understandable that, in cases other than those of organised crime, the emphasis in the system is on the stopping of fraudulent payments, not on dragging individuals before the court.
Of course a local authority may not want to employ someone who apparently has a record of housing benefit fraud against it or any other local authority. We should however be concerned about people being ruled out of employment for supposedly committing fraud when they have never been convicted of a crime, and the allegations have never been tested in court. That underlines the sensitivity of the amendment. We all recognise that checks and balances are required.
It would be helpful if the Minister would explain his understanding of the current position and how information could be used to enable local authorities and the department to protect themselves against organised fraud. The discussion provides a useful opportunity to find out from the Minister the extent of internal fraud in the system. Does the department have figures on what it thinks might be the extent of organised fraud? Obviously undetected fraud is, by definition, unknowable. Presumably the department has some idea of how much it thinks might be attempted through organised fraud by individuals or more than one person inside the system. We accept that the vast majority (99.9 per cent.) of people who work in the social security system and the Benefits Agency are doing a good job.
For the record, it would be helpful to know the extent to which there have been problems of fraud in the system, and whether the department has an estimate of that. We believe it to be reasonable to raise this issue in the context of the Bill to ensure that we recognise that the possibility of fraud exists not just on the part of claimants. It would be helpful were the Committee to be told the position on internal fraud. I beg to move.
The Earl of Balfour: I am worried about the amendment. I feel that it will have the effect of restricting the employment of persons who have a low grade leaving school certificate. We have to think of the young apprentice going into a firm to learn whatever it may be. Many of us when we start working in an office, or anywhere else, may be stupid, but we should at least be given a chance to get started. I have a horrible feeling
Page 2, line 2, at end insert ("; or
( ) for use in assessing the suitability of staff employed for the purposes of administering social security benefits.").
6.45 p.m.
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