Speeches by Pinto-Duschinsky.

“Thank you, Secretary of State and permanent secretary, for coming to speak to us today. I would like to shift the conversation to the topic of pensions. The Pension Schemes Bill is going through the House at the moment, and we had the Mansion House speech last night, with the Mansion House accord signed just weeks befo…”

“That is very helpful. I want to come back to one thing you said, permanent secretary. I think I am right in saying that UC accounts for roughly 24% of benefits paid, but 76% of all fraud and error. I think you said that the fraud rate had come down from 12% to 9%, but that is still almost £1 in £10. Is there anything e…”

“That was a brilliant “Blue Peter”, “Here’s one I made earlier” moment; it was very good. The other part of that, which you are picking up, is increased automation: using a lot more AI and predictive tools to try to stop problems before they begin, for both fraud and error. We do not want people being underpaid or makin…”

“I would like to come on to the issue of fraud and error, which we talked about when you came in November. We highlighted evidence that the DWP was making efforts, and since then the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill has passed through the House, which is welcome. We also highlighted evidence that, in …”

“Fantastic. Secretary of State, you mentioned adequacy. You were absolutely right to raise that. I think I am right in saying that two in five people in the working-age population do not have adequate savings to sustain them at a reasonable level in retirement. What steps are you taking on adequacy?”

“This is the Government who got trade deals that the Conservative party failed to do, and saved hundreds of thousands of jobs. Are you saying that you would not have signed those deals? Are you saying—”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that, exactly because of those problems, we should all welcome the uplift to the basic rate of UC, which will lift the income of 6.5 million families?”

“Does the hon. Gentleman also care about deep poverty? That increased to a point where four in 10 children who were in poverty under the Conservatives were in deep poverty. Will he apologise for that?”

“I rise to speak against amendment (a) to amendment 2, amendments 45 and 52, and new clause 12. The creation of the modern welfare state by the 1945 Labour Government remains one of our proudest legacies. At its heart was the powerful idea that people should be protected from hardship and supported to realise their full…”

“It is always amusing to hear the shadow Chancellor, who presided over a crisis in the welfare system, complain about this Government’s actions to restore fiscal stability. It is like listening to an arsonist complaining about the fire brigade. Does my right hon. Friend agree it is difficult to take the Conservatives se…”

“Under the last Government, fly-tipping skyrocketed while prosecutions fell, and places like Burnt Oak, Colindale and west Hendon in my constituency paid the price. It is fantastic to see this Labour Government acting where the previous Government failed, bringing in stiffer penalties and giving the police powers to sei…”

“Can I quickly pick up on that point you just made? It harks back a bit to the conversation we had a few minutes ago about the former structure of UC where there was an LCWRA and an LCW, and similarly the ESA famously had three categories. It sounds again like you are envisaging a spectrum but pretty much for work-based…”

“Minister, one other area that will, of course, be very relevant in the conversation about Pathways to Work and the broader Green Paper is the issue of conditionality and the conditionality regimes that will be developing. You are consulting on the conditionality regimes to be applied to UC recipients in future. There w…”

“Thank you. As part of this conversation, the previous Government were on the verge of significantly amending the substantial risk regulations to reduce the number of people receiving UC health on these grounds. Do you plan to recreate those regulations in the reformed system?”

“Thank you, Minister, for taking the time to join us. As you will be aware, under the current incapacity benefits regime there are protections in regulations for certain groups of people who qualify automatically for LCWRA meaning that they qualify for the health component. They are treated automatically as though they …”

“One final question from me. We have talked about these three categories and, quite rightly, your focus is on LCWRA. That is also, as we have heard previously, where increasingly the disincentives and issues are, but the LCW category still persists, even though from a benefit standpoint it has been equalised with the st…”

“That is very helpful. One other thing you mentioned was tailoring of the system. Should you anticipate doing that, will it be driven by work coaches or by disability employment advisers? I think we have seen in the past that who tailors what hugely drives the shape of it and what the outcomes are. How do you see that w…”

“Absolutely, and this is some of what I am getting at, and it is probably me not being so clear that it is between pretty much substantive labour market engagement and those initial conversations. The evidence is clear that even having a chat raises employment rates by 3%. It sounds that you are envisaging something hal…”

“I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. Dozens of people from my Hendon constituency have been stranded in Israel and Iran. I thank the Foreign Secretary for his hard work on this issue, and it is good news that the first flight has already occurred. Can he say more about the timeframes for potential future fli…”

“I am very conscious that we are pretty much out of time, so I will be incredibly brief in building on Johanna’s questions. We talked about supported housing, but what impact does not having access to affordable, secure and high-quality housing have on pensioners and children?”