THE social-security system is “a matter of morality”, the Bishop of Lichfield, Dr Michael Ipgrave, told the House of Lords last week.
Speaking in 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 address the matter of claimants.
“To support people into work, where they are able; to ensure that people can enjoy an acceptable standard of living when they cannot work or to top up their low income; and to deliver a fair and sustainable social-security system now and in the future: 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 recover money when required — is also a morally vital matter of maintaining public consent, which should be a welcome outcome of this proposed legislation,” he said. “Put simply, our social-security system must both be fair and be perceived as fair by the public.”
The Bishop was concerned that “as one ingredient of a fair system, we need to ensure that people receive the benefits to which they are entitled. . . There may be circumstances when benefits are left unclaimed for good reasons, but most often this occurs when people do not realise there is support available to them.
“If this is about access to information, we must do more to inform. If it is about stigma, we must state clearly that our social-security system, like our schools or our health service, is a public good on which people should not be ashamed to draw when required.”
He was also concerned about the proposed use of AI tools.
Dr Ipgrave expressed concern that some claimants might be unfairly targeted. “Half of all children live in a family that interacts with the system in some form, and there is concern that expanding the DWP’s recovery powers . . . might risk affecting children at risk of poverty.” He was worried about the potential sanction of removing driving licences and how this “could impact children who are not at fault for the actions of their parents”, along with the Bill having “arrived in this House before the publication of the child-poverty strategy”.
Lord Rook (Labour), who is 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 address are clearly fiscal, the motivations are rightly and justly moral.”
He said that “decisive action 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 cannot be used to help the most disadvantaged to escape poverty.”
Giving her maiden speech, Baroness Spielman (Conservative) spoke of “ethical slippage . . . because fraud, which is the main 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 citizens.”
He said: “The powers constitute a fundamental assault on the right to privacy. They normalise mass surveillance of the poor, while doing nothing to address the significantly larger issue of tax fraud, which costs the Treasury nearly six times more than benefit 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 is also ordained, said: “This Government are determined to tackle the issue head-on with a Bill that will provide the right tools to protect public money and fight modern fraud, coupled with the right safeguards. The Bill is tough on those who commit fraud against our public services or our welfare state. In doing so, it gives reassurance to taxpayers.”
The Bill returns to Committee Stage.
