HC Deb 15 April 2002 vol 383 cc359-60
15. Helen Jones (Warrington, North)

What progress has been made in tackling housing benefit fraud; and if he will make a statement. [45026]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Malcolm Wicks)

Improving the overall performance of housing benefit administration is key to tackling housing benefit fraud, and many Members know that not all local authorities perform that task well at present. We have introduced new performance indicators to make an improvement possible.

The benefit fraud inspectorate does very valuable work on fraud, and the great majority of local authorities—some 77 per cent.—have now signed up to our verification framework, which provides a rigorous check on people's claims. In these different ways, we think that we are winning the war against housing benefit fraud, and we estimate savings so far of some £100 million.

Helen Jones

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply, and I acknowledge the work that has been done on this matter so far. Will he, however, undertake to discuss further with local authorities how we can ensure that people claiming housing benefit are actually living in the accommodation in which they claim to be living? I—and, I suspect, many other hon. Members—know of properties that are giro drops: addresses at which people register while living elsewhere. Those people are not only committing benefit fraud but depriving others of much-needed local authority accommodation. Will my hon. Friend look into this matter and see what can be done to improve the situation?

Malcolm Wicks

Among other things, the fact that we will not have girocheques redirected is one part of our armoury that I should draw to the attention of the House. It is also important that local authorities should make house visits, not only in suspected cases but more randomly to verify that people are living in the house that they claim to be living in.

Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet)

Is not the real test of the effectiveness of the Government's policies for dealing with housing benefit and social security fraud to be found in two simple facts? The first is that the level of fraud has significantly increased in the last four years; the second is that the number of prosecutions in 2001 was significantly less than in 1997. Is not all this exemplified by the fact that in one recent financial year, more than half of all local authorities did not bring even one prosecution for housing benefit or council tax fraud?

Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst)

Is it true?

Malcolm Wicks

I will answer the question in a formal way, rather than responding to heckling from the Opposition Front Bench. In terms of levels of housing benefit fraud in recent years, we simply do not know. It was this Government—not the last one—who initiated the first proper, ongoing research into this matter, and that will enable us to report to the House on levels of housing benefit fraud. I regret to say that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman) is simply wrong about prosecutions following local authority investigations. My reply to the heckler is, therefore, that he is wrong, too—not, I think, for the first time. In 1997–98, there were 700 prosecutions following local authority investigations; in 2000–01, there were 1,100. That figure has increased under the Labour Government.

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