The Department works collaboratively across Government and law enforcement agencies to investigate welfare fraud perpetrated by organised criminal gangs. This type of criminality is complex and far-reaching, and a collaborative approach is therefore essential. I am pleased to confirm that new powers in the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill will help us better tackle organised crime by taking greater control of our investigations through new powers of entry, search and seizure.
Having spent my career before entering this place tackling fraud, I recognise the scale of the challenge, so I commend the Secretary of State for her leadership, with the biggest ever crackdown on benefit fraud. Given the success of whistleblower reward schemes in tax and financial crime, does my hon. Friend agree with me that there is merit in exploring similar schemes to uncover organised fraud in the benefits system, so that more funds can be recovered to support those who genuinely need support: our constituents?
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. We take all allegations of fraud seriously. People who suspect fraud against the Department for Work and Pensions can use existing channels to report it, including the national benefit fraud hotline. This Government are not complacent. As I mentioned in my substantive reply, we are taking action with the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill, which will provide a range of new powers to address fraud and error in the social security system, after the Conservative party failed to substantively update our powers to tackle ever-more complex fraud during 14 long years in office. However, I will watch with interest whether there is learning from the schemes my hon. Friend mentioned that could be applied to cases of benefit fraud.
Organised gangs operate in many spheres—sex, drugs and, as reported in the media, our welfare system. This totally undermines public confidence in the system. Will the Minister make representations to the Home Secretary to ensure that foreign nationals who are found to have abused our welfare system are removed from the country?
I am very happy to raise with the Home Office the issue that the hon. Gentleman has highlighted, but I would say to him, and indeed to his colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench, that what genuinely undermines confidence in the welfare system is the record of the previous Government, who allowed welfare fraud to spiral towards £10 billion a year and failed to take the powers needed, as we are doing now, to get that number down.
4. What steps she is taking to reduce the number of children in poverty in Gloucester.
Unemployment Levels
Personal Independence Payment
Universal Credit: Support into Work
Child Maintenance System: Economic Abuse
Pensions Policy: Climate and Nature Targets
Personal Independence Payment
Child Poverty Taskforce
Support into Work
Severely Disabled People: East Worthing and Shoreham
Topical Questions
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The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Liz Kendall)
LabourLeicester West
If I may briefly say so, I am very proud that the spending review delivered the largest ever investment in employment support for sick and disabled people—quadrupling what we inherited from the last Government to over £1 billion a year, or a total of £3.5 billion over this Parliament—so that those who can work get the support they need, while we protect those who can never work.
Tackling child poverty is my personal priority, so I am proud that the Education Secretary and I are bringing in free school meals for all children in families on universal credit, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty—a down payment on our child poverty strategy. We are also delivering the first ever three-year funding settlement for the household support fund, including for holiday hunger, and we are committed to funding the holiday activities and food programme, stopping kids going hungry while they are at school and during the holidays, too.
I thank the Secretary of State for that response. One of the best ways of reducing child poverty is helping parents into good, stable and well-paid jobs, which the SNP Scottish Government are failing abjectly to do. For example, the SNP manifesto in 2021 promised to double investment in the paternal employment fund to £15 million over two years to help low-income families get into work. However, in 2023 that pledge was scrapped. Will the Secretary of State call on the Scottish Government to put some of their record funding into employability funds, to help my Livingston constituents get into work and to provide good jobs right across Scotland?
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Economic inactivity is higher in Scotland than in the UK as a whole, and a staggering one in six young Scots are not in education, employment or training. We have delivered an extra £9 billion for Scotland over the spending review—the biggest settlement in the history of devolution—and I hope the SNP will match our ambition to get people who can work into work by investing in employment services, not cutting them, as they have in recent years.
The expansion of free school meals will massively help families in my constituency of Gloucester and take them out of poverty. Can the Secretary of State confirm how many more families in Gloucester will be eligible for free school meals under the Government’s expansion, and what steps is she taking with the Secretary of State for Education to ensure that every child is able to access that support?
This vital step will benefit 7,560 children in my hon. Friend’s constituency. It comes on top of rolling out free breakfast clubs, starting with Calton and Grange primary schools in his constituency, our new fair repayment rate in universal credit, and the first ever permanent, above-inflation increase in the standard allowance of universal credit, a vital part of our welfare reforms, putting more money into the pockets of hard-working families and helping to give all children the best start in life.
At the lobby last week by the food banks, a number of people expressed the wish to have greater facilities to educate their clients with respect to shopping and preparing meals more effectively. They make a fair point, don’t they?
As the former chair of Feeding Leicester, I know that many of our food banks offer a range of support, helping to signpost people to mental health treatment, debt advice and other measures to improve their wellbeing. They certainly do not need any advice from Conservative Members. Under their watch, we saw 900,000 more children and 200,000 more pensioners in poverty. It is time they took a lesson from this side of the House to get this issue right.
Probably the largest single driver of child poverty in my communities is the enormous cost of housing. The average house price in my community is up to 13 times average household incomes. That drives grinding poverty, particularly among children. Will the Secretary of State have a word with her right hon. and hon. Friends in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that a disproportionate amount of housing grant goes to rural communities such as mine, in particular with the Windermere Gateway scheme?
Reducing housing costs is one of the key things we are looking at in the child poverty taskforce in advance of our strategy, which we will publish in the autumn. We are investing an additional £39 billion in building more social, affordable and other homes, but I will, of course, always raise all issues relating to housing, because kids deserve to live in good homes that are affordable. That is what this Government intend to achieve.
As is the case for my hon. Friends the Members for Livingston (Gregor Poynton) and for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre), a number of my constituents are affected by the two-child cap, with the latest statistics showing that 330 households in my constituency are impacted. I absolutely agree with a number of charities that removing the cap alone is not a silver bullet to tackle child poverty, but it will make a difference. Can my right hon. Friend confirm whether the child poverty taskforce is considering the removal of the two-child cap?