| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Dubs: My Lords, perhaps the Minister will give way. I welcome what she has said so far by way of explanation and look forward to hearing the rest of it when the Minister is ready to give it to us.
Baroness Blatch: It was fair not to penalise those who renounced their citizenship before the Home Secretary made his announcement. I think I got it right in my own first answer. I should have left it at that while I was winning.
I join my noble friend in thanking my right honourable friend the Secretary of State who did listen to the arguments; Members of another place who worked very hard and fast in bringing the Bill before us at this time; and the officials in the Home Office who, I know, have been helpful to my noble friend in talking him through the amendments to make sure that nothing in the intentions of my noble friend were compromised in any way.
I think all of us will want to join my noble friend and other noble Lords who referred to the late Lord Bonham-Carter. What Lord Bonham-Carter started has been finished tonight, due in large measure, I believe, to the arguments he put in this House which were taken up by my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke. I am
not sure what protocol says about what I am about to say. But I should like not simply to put that on record but to write to Lady Bonham-Carter with the acknowledgment of this House that the efforts made by Lord Bonham-Carter in this respect have been both recognised and honoured in the passage of this Bill.Let me conclude by offering my congratulations to my noble friend on his success with the Bill. I know that it will give him and all those who supported him great satisfaction to see it enacted and this long-running and difficult issue brought to a happy conclusion.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, let me add a word in relation to the late Lord Bonham-Carter. I knew him very well as a friend in all kinds of political activities outside the House, although he was in a different party. I very much respected the stand that he took on this matter. I was not a Member of the House at the time. What the Minister said is a very noble gesture with which I should like to associate myself fully.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to express my appreciation and say to the noble Baroness that what she has just said is generous beyond the call of duty. I am sure that it will be very deeply appreciated by Lady Bonham-Carter.
Lord Willoughby de Broke: My Lords, I commend Commons Amendment No. 1 to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
2
3
'.--(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, the Secretary of State shall, on an application made for the purpose, register as a British citizen any person who--
(a) is ordinarily resident in Hong Kong at the time of the application; and
(b) satisfies the requirements of subsection (2) or (3) below.
(2) The requirements of this subsection are that, immediately before 4th February 1997 ("the relevant date"), the person--
(a) was ordinarily resident in Hong Kong;
(b) was a British Dependent Territories citizen by virtue only of his having a connection with Hong Kong (within the meaning given by the Schedule to this Act); and
(c) would have been a stateless person if he had not been such a citizen, or such a citizen and a British National (Overseas).
(3) The requirements of this subsection are that, immediately before the relevant date, the person--
(a) was ordinarily resident in Hong Kong;
(b) was a British Overseas citizen, a British subject or a British protected person; and
(c) would have been a stateless person if he had not been such a citizen, subject or person.
(4) Subsections (2) and (3) above shall each have effect, in relation to a person who is or was born at any time on or after the relevant date, as if the reference to immediately before that date were a reference to that time.
(5) Paragraphs (b) and (c) of each of those subsections shall have effect, in relation to a person who, at any time on or after the relevant date, becomes or became--
(a) in the case of subsection (2) above, a British Dependent Territories citizen; or
(b) in the case of subsection (3) above, a British Overseas citizen, a British subject or a British protected person,
as if the reference to immediately before that date were a reference to that time.
(6) A person shall not be registered under subsection (1) above if, on or after the relevant date, he renounces or renounced, or otherwise gives or gave up of his own volition, the status of a national or citizen of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom.
(7) A person shall not be registered under subsection (1) above before 1st July 1997.
(8) In this section expressions which are also used in the British Nationality Act 1981 ("the principal Act") have the same meanings as in that Act.'.
5
Clause 4, page 2, line 1, leave out subsections (1) and (2) and insert--
Clause 4, page 2, line 11, leave out 'other than subsection (2)'.
Clause 4, page 2, leave out lines 13 and 14.
Clause 4, page 2, line 19, at end insert--
Clause 5, page 2, line 24, leave out subsection (3).
Schedule 1, page 3, line 5, leave out from 'person' to 'below' in line 8 and insert 'shall be taken to have a connection with Hong Kong for the purposes of section (Acquisition of British citizenship)(2) of this Act if--
Schedule 1, page 3, line 15, after 'mother' insert '("the registered person")'.
Schedule 1, page 3, line 20, leave out 'person registered' and insert 'registered person'.
Schedule 1, page 3, line 25, leave out from 'would' to end of line 26 and insert ', but for his death or renunciation of citizenship, be such a citizen by virtue of his having such a connection'.
Schedule 1, page 3, line 28, leave out 'citizenship has been renounced and subsequently resumed,' and insert 'the registered person had previously renounced citizenship of
Schedule 1, page 3, line 36, leave out 'have been so but for his death' and insert ', but for his death or renunciation of citizenship, be such a citizen by virtue of his having such a connection'.
Schedule 1, page 3, line 42, leave out '(3)' and insert '2.'.
Schedule 1, page 3, line 43, leave out 'under' and insert 'as specified in'.
Lord Willoughby de Broke: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 2 to 18 en bloc, to which I spoke on Commons Amendment No. 1.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 2 to 18.--(Lord Willoughby de Broke.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 58:
'(1) A person who is registered as a British citizen under subsection (1) of section (Acquisition of British citizenship) above, and satisfies the requirements of subsection (2) of that section, shall be treated for the purposes of the principal Act as--
(a) a British citizen by descent; or
(b) a British citizen otherwise than by descent,
according as, immediately before becoming a British citizen, he was for the purposes of that Act a British Dependent Territories citizen by descent or a British Dependent Territories citizen otherwise than by descent.
(2) A person who is registered as a British citizen under subsection (1) of section (Acquisition of British citizenship) above, and satisfies the requirements of subsection (3) of that section, shall be treated for the purposes of the principal Act as a British citizen by descent.'.
6
7
8
'section 51(3) (meaning of "citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies" in other Acts and instruments).'.
9
10
(a) subject to paragraph 2'.
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
8.6 p.m.
After Clause 5, insert the following new clause--
(". The Secretary of State shall, within two years of the commencement of this Act, lay before each House of Parliament a report on such progress as has been made on the efficiency of administration in maximising entitlement to benefit, to include--
(a) an assessment from each local authority as to the progress made by that authority in identifying and maximising entitlement to benefit in that authority area;
(b) the extent to which information held by any authority under the provisions of this Act has been used by the authority and the Secretary of State to identify those persons who are entitled to receive benefit for the purposes of determining that entitlement; and
(c) the extent to which information supplied to one authority for the purposes of ascertaining benefit entitlement has been used as verification for another benefit claim.").
The noble Baroness said: We return to the subject of benefit entitlement. It is an extremely important issue and only one amendment so far has addressed it. On that amendment, Amendment No. 6, with which Amendment No. 57 was grouped, we argued that in the four main income related benefits--family credit, income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit--perhaps £2 billion to £3 billion worth of benefit went unclaimed. In other words, probably as much benefit was underpaid in the DSS's budget as was lost because it was overpaid due to fraud, a pattern broadly confirmed by research abroad.
It is worth emphasising that over 30 per cent. of those eligible for the in-work benefit of family credit fail to claim it; that probably 30 per cent. of pensioners eligible
It is often said that people fail to claim because the sums are too small. But, as we argued last Tuesday, the sums can be very large indeed. A pensioner who fails to claim income support and council tax benefit is probably losing a £20 addition to a pension of £61 a week. Again, it is sometimes said that people fail to claim because their circumstances change very rapidly. Again, that is simply not true for pensioners whose income varies very little over the rest of their non-working lives.
It is sometimes said by the Government--it was repeated by the Minister last Tuesday night--that it is a matter of personal choice. I fail to see how, realistically, it can be a matter of personal choice to live on £61 a week rather than £81 a week and have to stay in bed because you cannot afford to run the heating in the living room. We all have enough confidence in the Minister's decency to know that he does not want pensioners living below the poverty line because they fail to claim the benefits to which they are entitled. The question is how we encourage them to take up those benefits.
One thing we have found, and it is clear from the Government's own report Income Related Benefits: Estimates of Take Up, is that of all the income related benefits, housing benefit has the highest take-up, even by pensioners. More than 90 per cent. of pensioners were claiming housing benefit to which they were entitled. If they were local authority tenants, so far as I can tell from the statistics, though they are not calculated in the most useful way for this purpose, it looks as though there is almost 100 per cent. take up.
The reason is very simple. The local authority, as I well know because I have been involved in some of these campaigns, uses information technology and 100 per cent. mailing through rent books, backed up by take-up campaigns to ensure that every tenant is aware of housing benefit. It uses welfare rights officers to help with original forms and thereafter IT comes into play. As housing benefit is deducted from the gross rent, most pensioners--and certainly all of those on the basic state pension only--live, and learn to live, rent free.
In other words, we already know how to use IT backed by entitlement campaigns to ensure that there can be virtually 100 per cent. delivery of an income-related benefit to the elderly, who seem with other benefits so unwilling to claim what is rightfully theirs. We ask the Government therefore to use the same information technology which is sought to eradicate overpayment due to fraud to ensure that it also eradicates that underpayment due to under-claiming. We
The Victorians were rather keen on categorising people and used to divide their poor into God's poor, poor devils and the devil's poor; that is, those deserving of charity, those deserving of the poor law and those deserving of prison. We are right to stamp down on fraud and to proclaim publicly that we will not tolerate it. But in the process--this must worry all of us--we run the risk of demonising claimants as scroungers and thus deterring the very people--the "deserving poor" and certainly the elderly, those who cling to standards of respectability and privacy, who conceal their poverty rather than flaunt it and who are too easily shamed by being branded as a welfare claimant--from claiming that which is their due.
Hence this amendment. We know that we have the technology to improve the take-up of benefits to meet real need. We know that a considerable number of pensioners claim one means-tested benefit, so that their financial circumstances are, so to speak, on file, but fail to claim another one. That information could be used to passport people onto that second benefit. If one took, for example, council tax benefit, we could probably reach about 70 per cent. of pensioners who are not claiming income support; not more than 70 per cent., I accept, because there are differences in the capital rules on the one hand and many pensioners live in the home of someone else so they do not receive council tax benefit. Nonetheless, if we used council tax benefit to passport people on to income support and reached those 70 per cent., where the two groups overlap according to our research, instead of only 60 per cent. of pensioners claiming their top-up in income support, we might reach between 85 and 88 per cent. We cannot get 100 per cent.--I accept all the warnings about technical difficulties, deduction rules and the like--but we can do a darned sight better than we are doing at the moment and than the Government appear willing to do.
We have the technology. We now need to ensure the political will. We want to ensure that local authorities are determined not only to stamp out fraud but also to deliver benefit to those who are entitled to it. One way of ensuring that political will is to have local authorities report to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State report to Parliament on how successful they have been in both regards--not just eradicating fraud but encouraging take-up of benefit. By engaging in take-up campaigns which will be beneficial to the claimant and to the local economy, we believe that local authorities can be very successful on this score. The take-up campaign in which my own local authority was involved brought nearly £500,000 of extra benefit into our community in the space of a month. I very much hope that the Government accept the spirit of the amendment. I beg to move.
8.15 p.m.
Earl Russell: The point the noble Baroness makes about demonising claimants is an important one. I have looked at some of the advertisements for the fraud hotline and I believe that they run the risk of creating that effect. I accept that that is not their intention, but again I come back to the point about balance. If you stress fraud and you do not stress entitlement you create a thoroughly misleading picture. Then you get a cult of hostility to claimants. If we can believe the advance publicity for the forthcoming programme on Channel 4 it seems that a great deal of that has rubbed off on people who do not know any better than to pick up casual information. There will always be such people. So something really must be done on this front.
I intend to address this matter further on Amendment No. 59. However, if the Minister should happen to prefer the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, I should be entirely happy with that. The points also apply about putting the local authority under two different incentives, two different criteria of success. Then the local authority can, with respect for the evidence, attempt to balance those criteria against each other. We already have targets, tables and all that apparatus for the detection of fraud. I have drawn the Minister's attention previously to the fact that Liberal Democrat councils happen to come top in them. I do not set much weight by league tables. I do not claim great credit for that fact. I just say it in order to say that I speak, as it were, from, in the Government's own terms, a position of perhaps some strength. It is from that position that I should like to see equal weight given to the pursuit of entitlement and take-up. I hope the Minister will look with favour on one or other of the amendments. It really does not desperately worry me which of them it is.
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page