THE social-security system is “a matter of morality”, the Bishop of Lichfield, Dr Michael Ipgrave, told the House of Lords last week.
Speaking within the Second Reading of the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill on Thursday, he said that he had been encouraged by the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, to deal with the matter of claimants.
“To support people into work, where they’re able; to be sure that people can enjoy an appropriate lifestyle when they can’t work or to top up their low income; and to deliver a good and sustainable social-security system now and in the longer term: these are all moral imperatives,” Dr Ipgrave said.
The Bill seeks to tighten loopholes and crack down on fraud. “Addressing fraud and error — ensuring that Government can get well money when required — can be a morally vital matter of maintaining public consent, which must be a welcome end result of this proposed laws,” he said. “Put simply, our social-security system must each be fair and be perceived as fair by the general public.”
The Bishop was concerned that “as one ingredient of a good system, we want to be sure that people receive the advantages to which they’re entitled. . . There could also be circumstances when advantages are left unclaimed for good reasons, but most frequently this happens when people don’t realise there may be support available to them.
“If that is about access to information, we must do more to tell. If it’s about stigma, we must state clearly that our social-security system, like our schools or our health service, is a public good on which individuals shouldn’t be ashamed to attract when required.”
He was also concerned concerning the proposed use of AI tools.
Dr Ipgrave expressed concern that some claimants is likely to be unfairly targeted. “Half of all children live in a family that interacts with the system in some form, and there may be concern that expanding the DWP’s recovery powers . . . might risk affecting children prone to poverty.” He was fearful concerning the potential sanction of removing driving licences and the way this “could impact children who aren’t at fault for the actions of their parents”, together with the Bill having “arrived on this House before the publication of the child-poverty strategy”.
Lord Rook (Labour), who’s a priest, said that “all financial documents are moral documents, and all financial policies are moral policies. While the measures that this Bill seeks to deal with are clearly fiscal, the motivations are rightly and justly moral.”
He said that “decisive motion is clearly needed” to tackle “bad actors” and fraudsters, especially when so many third-sector organisations had not survived the pandemic — “every penny stolen from the Government is a penny that can’t be used to assist essentially the most disadvantaged to flee poverty.”
Giving her maiden speech, Baroness Spielman (Conservative) spoke of “ethical slippage . . . because fraud, which is the predominant focus of this Bill, sits at one end of an ethical spectrum”. Lord Palmer (Liberal Democrat) was “in firm opposition” to the Bill because “under the guise of fraud prevention, [it] risks entrenching mistrust, undermining civil liberties, and further marginalising our most vulnerable residents.”
He said: “The powers constitute a fundamental assault on the best to privacy. They normalise mass surveillance of the poor, while doing nothing to deal with the significantly larger issue of tax fraud, which costs the Treasury nearly six times greater than profit fraud but receives a fraction of this attention.”
Responding for the Government, and to many interjections, the Minister for the Department of Work and Pensions, Baroness Sherlock, who can be ordained, said: “This Government are determined to tackle the problem head-on with a Bill that can provide the best tools to guard public money and fight modern fraud, coupled with the best safeguards. The Bill is hard on those that commit fraud against our public services or our welfare state. In doing so, it gives reassurance to taxpayers.”
The Bill returns to Committee Stage.
