SOCIAL SECURITY (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) [MONEY] (Hansard, 2 December 1976)

§ Mr. Nick Budgen (Wolverhampton, South-West)
It is necessary to consider the Money Resolution with care because within it there is a provision that there should be a payment out of money provided by Parliament for administrative expenses—[Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. An hon. Member is trying to address the House.

§ Mr. Budgen
When the Minister for Social Security was purporting to address you, Mr. Speaker, while in fact addressing me and my new allies below the Gangway on the Government side, he said towards the end of his somewhat 1302 disjointed peroration that he conceded that there were substantial anomalies and abuses within the social security system. It is right that we should do our best to see what are the injustices perpetrated by a system which now consumes about 20 per cent. of public expenditure, for there is no greater factor causing resentment and a sense of injustice than the present social security system.
First, there is the injustice which plainly arises when people entitled to benefit do not get it. Neither the Secretary of State nor the Minister of Social Security said much about that. They failed to take the chance open to them in introducing the Bill to do something to ensure that people understood the benefits rather better.
Against that background, we ought to consider the Money Resolution with a view to ensuring that administrative action is taken to help people to claim benefits to which they are entitled. When I last investigated the matter there were 16 different means-tested benefits administered by the Government and at the same time there were 32 different means-tested benefits administered by local authorities.
In order to help the citizen or his wife round this vast maze of confused benefit and means-testing there were recently extant as many as 100 different leaflets. A person does not need just a degree in law or public administration to look through and understand this great caucus of administrative fiat. He needs a first-class degree. He needs the sort of mind that a top civil servant or a senior judge has. It is a total abuse to think that a woman with perhaps five children and a sixth on the way has to try to thumb her way through all this great mass of literature to discover whether she is entitled to benefit.
I suggest that in this Money Resolution we should be considering ways in which we can provide administrative funds to simplify the system of benefits. It is very sad that the Minister and the Secretary of State have not thought of ways by which, for example, application for benefit can be made on a single form. I recall making this suggestion some two years ago. I believe that a pilot scheme has been tried in Shropshire. I am sorry that the Minister has not told us about 1303 that pilot scheme, which might have been dealt with in the Money Resolution—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is right when he says that it might have been dealt with, but it is not in the Bill. He must confine himself to the Money Resolution which deals with the Bill.

§ Mr. Budgen
I feared, Mr. Speaker, that you might misunderstand what I was saying, and I come back immediately to the Money Resolution, which, as you will have noted, refers in paragraph (1) to the payment out of money provided by Parliament on any administrative expense. I am, therefore, referring to those administrative expenses which might be paid out under that paragraph, and I think that you will agree that my suggestion for a rationalised and consolidated system for application for benefit will fall for consideration under the proposal for administrative expenses, and I shall confine all my remarks to these proposals for administrative expenses.
The second way in which administrative expenses might be curtailed is by a major attack upon abuse. The Minister dealt with the attack upon abuse, but I suggest that he did it in an unfortunate way because he did not suggest methods by which fraud could be attacked. I am sure that you will agree, Mr. Speaker, that that falls for consideration under the broad topic of expenses for administration.
I argue that the House is now entitled to consider the general question of measures taken to deal with fraud in the social security system.

§ Mr. Speaker
The hon. Gentleman is entitled to talk about administrative expenses, but not about the broad issue of fraud. We are not providing money for that.

§ Mr. Budgen
We are not knowingly providing money for fraudulent purposes, of course, but we are providing money for administrative expenses which are 1304 going towards the broad proposals of the Bill and the Money Resolution which flows from it. I am suggesting proposals by which further expenditure might in the short term be properly incurred under this Money Resolution.

§ The Minister for Social Security (Mr. Stanley Orme)
This is all totally out of order.

§ Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield)
No. It is very good.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Private conversations should not continue across the Floor or, for that matter, horizontally.

§ Mr. Budgen
I am coming to the end of my remarks, and perhaps I am treading perilously near to the edge of what I am entitled to say on a Money Resolution.
To conclude, one of the ways in which the Government might consider a little extra administrative expense would be to look into the whole question of the requirement upon applicants to prove their identity when they apply for any form of social security benefit. They should look into the possibility of introducing identity cards, because most social security frauds arise from people pretending that they are someone else.