Social Security (Loss of Benefit) (Amendment) Regulations 2013

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am particularly grateful that this has been quite a short debate. I appreciate the words of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. I do think that the debates we have on these matters are of an extraordinarily high quality. One of the reasons for that is that my department makes an effort to get information out to noble Lords so that these quite complicated matters can be understood and we do not waste a lot of time on points that are just misunderstood. However, I am deeply impressed by the number of people who have expended so much intellectual energy on gaining an understanding of what is in effect a rebuild of our social affairs. I appreciate that very much. As I say, I have taken a lot of ideas from noble Lords and I hope to be able to go on doing so. I therefore thank all noble Lords who have taken part in these debates.

I have one bit of information and one idea to steal from the noble Lord. We think that with the immediate three-year penalty for serious fraud, we estimate that there will be something in the order of 400 cases a year by 2020. The idea I want to take from the noble Lord is one that I do not think we have at the moment. It concerns the redirection of the payment away from the fraudster. That is actually a smart idea in these cases, and perhaps we shall claim it.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, this issue arose on the very first debate of the day. Will the noble Lord apply it where all sanctions occur, thus ensuring that there is an assumption that there will be a switch of payment to the main carer?

[Lord Freud]

The noble Baroness always takes a finger and seizes the rest of the arm. I have said that I will look at the idea.

It is clear that we do not have an effective deterrent at the moment. The view from the survey shows that people do not think that there is much to worry about from being caught out. We hope that the new regime will actually make people stop and think before committing a fraud. That is its intention, and I welcome the cross-party support for that. I therefore commend these regulations to the House.