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5.53 pm
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) for,like him, I wish to congratulate the Government, but for very different reasons. I want to congratulate the Government on their sheer nerve and effrontery in coming here today and presenting themselves as the friend of the taxpayer, given their record of the past 17 years.
If I am able to keep the attention of the House for a short period, I want to argue why not only the House but the country should condemn the Government for their lack of stewardship in safeguarding taxpayers' money over the past 17 years. In deploying that charge against the Government, we need to consider both fraud that is undertaken by claimants and fraud that is undertaken by gangs of highly motivated individuals--as the late leader of the Labour party once described such groups--to discover what action the Government have taken.
Clearly, whatever their circumstances, some people who claim benefit would happily commit fraud against their fellow citizens and fellow taxpayers. Others are pushed into doing so because of the circumstances in which they find themselves. I do not stand here today to make excuses for them--I have always stood up and condemned them--but I am minded to draw attention to the fact that they may have better reasons for committing fraud than other groups.
Unlike those on the Treasury Bench, I take seriously the fact that my constituents are men and women who are interested in economics and who respond to incentives and opportunities offered to them. That was why it was so important for my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) to draw attention to the massive extension of means tests under this Government which has perverted our social security system.
When Attlee finished the job of implementing his wave of reforms, for each £10 paid in welfare only £1 was paid in means-tested support. Now, under this Government, for
each £3 paid in welfare £1 is paid in means-tested support. We all know how means tests operate on human character, especially when there is a scarcity of jobs--given the opportunity, all our constituents would like to take jobs. We know that means tests penalise people who work harder and penalise people who move off benefit.We know that means tests strike at that group of the population whom the Tories used to think constituted the bedrock of their support. Those people thought that saving was important and that such action would be rewarded, saluted and commended by the Government as proper behaviour, not mocked. Those people saw that they would lose out in the welfare state.
With the extension of means tests, massive penalties have been placed on people who tell the truth. Far from having a welfare state that supports those verities that any civilised, sensible society would wish to support--hard work, the search for work, savings and honesty--the Government have rescheduled the welfare state to attack those verities.
The first part of the charge sheet against the Government draws attention to their sheer nerve in coming here and saying that they are tough on fraud. It rams home the fact that, although the Government say that they know how ordinary men and women respond to economic incentives, they clearly fail to comprehend what that means in the welfare state. In addition, we must get to grips with how nasty some people are--particularly, how some of those nasty people are prepared to operate in gangs.
The Select Committee has been undertaking the inquiry not merely to try to prod the Government into some action or to find out more information than the Government have, but, in our own small way, to try to advance, support and invite those members of the public services who try to crack down on fraud--I do not say that lightly, as it is getting tougher for such people. Within the year, people who have checked up on MOT tests have been murdered by those wanting to dispense with the people who uncovered their fraud. If we took the problem seriously, they would be the most prized people in public service. There would have to be more than mere lip service offered: we would have to pay people properly for the risks that they take on our behalf in trying to get to grips with gang attacks on the social security system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury drew attention to the Government's somewhat complacent view of the extent of fraud. It is not just a personal game that I like to have with the Secretary of State when I draw attention to the way in which he keeps revising his estimates of the extent of fraud as he is pushed into further measures. I am pleased that he takes them. Later, I shall underline how honest such an approach is, given that none of us can know the true extent of fraud.
Let us take the example of Haringey, a borough that is serious in cracking down on fraud and not only saying that it is. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury told us about the number of staff involved in dealing with fraud. Landlord fraud is the biggest problem with housing benefit--that does not apply to other benefits--and involves at least three, and perhaps four, times the amount of fraud that the Government imagine exists.
Mr. Field:
The Secretary of State shakes his head, but if this debates helps in one way I hope that it will be by making it clear to him that he is still not taking seriously enough the size of the problem of housing benefit fraud. That is the second part of the charge sheet. The right hon. Gentleman helps me to make that charge by saying that I am over-egging my case.
There is a third, more important, charge to be made against the Government. They have allowed the national insurance system, which should have been the fail-safe mechanism of the whole social security system, to become riddled with fraud. I do not want take too much time, so I shall give only one example of that.
We recently debated asylum seekers. I commiserated with the Secretary of State on the fact that he had been pushed by his colleagues, because of the failure of the Home Office to guard our borders properly, into using the social security system as a way of trying to control illegal immigrants. I said that I thought that he had totally misread the situation. We now have a policy of starving out asylum seekers who do not get their claims recognised. Before long, the right hon. Gentleman will rue the day he introduced those regulations, when the press wake up to the people who are already homeless and hungry and who are being serviced by charities and churches. Those people will soon set up camp cities.It will go on day in, day out. That will not be a pleasant case for him to answer.
Equally serious is the way in which the Government allowed asylum seekers to build up their claims over most of the Government's period of stewardship. If the Secretary of State had gone to the centre at Croydon during much of the Government's time in office, he would have found that the crucial role of checking whether people were genuine--whether there were real individuals at the end of claims--was performed by two government officials. They sat in their office with ring files in front of them, turning over the photographs and trying to recognise photographs on the applications that might have looked like others that they had seen five or 10 minutes ago--let alone 10 hours ago. That was the check. It was easy for people to claim that they were asylum seekers when they were nothing of the sort, to build up a series of claims, get the crucial note from the Home Office accepting that they were asylum seekers and thereby get their national insurance numbers. That is why we have large numbers of people trading in national insurance numbers.
Mr. Field:
The Secretary of State again seems to disagree, but time will tell which of us was more right. That helps to explain why, when anti-fraud officers raid some London homes, they find claimants of housing benefit or landlords with 50 or more false identities, each with different national insurance numbers. Often, they have got references through their cheque cards, bills or driving licences. We are not dealing with simple social security frauds; one fraud is reinforced by others, with addresses right across London and beyond. Much of that problem stems from the Government's continual failure to secure our borders safely. We are in an appalling state when the Secretary of State has not only to safeguard the social security budget but to act as a policeman in a way in which the Home Office is failing to do.
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