Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mel Stride and Gareth Bacon

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

T1.   If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)]

When I was appointed to this job, I came to the House and said that one of our key focuses would be economic inactivity, which, as we have just heard, has fallen: it is down by 45% since its peak, and was down by 140,000 in the last quarter alone. Another key focus is bearing down on fraud, and fraud levels have fallen by some 10% across our benefits system since we published our fraud plan in May last year.

[Gareth Bacon]

Some on the political left have made much noise about the third-party universal basic income pilots that have been launched in recent days. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the concept of a universal basic income was roundly rejected even during the pandemic, and that this kind of uneven, untargeted and dependency-creating communism is doomed to failure?