Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), my fellow Select Committee Member.

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about the need for reform of the social security system. I believe that the social security system, like the NHS, should be there for any one of us in our time of need, whether that need is a result of being in low-paid work or of not being in work at all, protecting us from poverty and destitution. Unfortunately, it did not do that under the last Government. If we become sick or disabled or if we can no longer work, the system should be there for us. I believe that the vast majority of people of working age want to work and do the right thing by their families, and, as the Committee heard, there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. We have just completed our “Pathways to Work” inquiry.

The Leader of the Opposition, who I think was the Equalities Minister in the last Government, did not mention, for example, the inquiry conducted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission—which was subsequently escalated to an investigation—into the DWP’s potential discrimination against disabled people. That is still outstanding. Nor did the Leader of the Opposition mention the investigation of the last Government by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for breaches of the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities—not once, but twice. What she said was therefore a little bit rich.

For the last 15 years we have seen a punitive, even dehumanising, social security system in which not being able to work has been viewed with suspicion or worse—with devastating consequences, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). Too many people relying on social security support to survive have died through suicide, starvation and other circumstances exacerbated by their poverty. Since 2010, under previous Administrations, 10 prevention of future deaths reports have been issued by coroners because of the direct causal responsibility of the DWP. We do not even know the full number of claimants’ deaths or the full extent of the harms, but my Committee’s “Safeguarding Vulnerable Claimants” report, published in May, defined recommendations to prevent such harms from being done to claimants, and it has been at the forefront of my mind while I have been considering the Bill.

I want to acknowledge some of the positive measures in the “Pathways to Work” Green Paper and the “Get Britain Working” White Paper, which I believe will have a significant and positive impact on people’s lives and help them to get into work. Those measures include the reform of jobcentres and the merger with the National Careers Service; the new right to try and the new regulations just announced; the Trailblazer programme, which will increase the opportunity for people to get closer to the labour market by working with community groups, the voluntary sector and health bodies; Connect to Work, providing employment support; “Keep Britain Working”, an essential and independent review undertaken by Sir Charlie Mayfield on how to reduce the appalling disability employment gap, which was not improved by the Opposition during their 15 years in power and which remains at about 29%; and—this is really important—the commitment to safeguarding, which is one of the key measures in the Green Paper.

There is also, of course, the work that the Government are undertaking in other Departments. They are increasing NHS capacity to ensure that, for example, hip or knee replacements or mental health support are available in weeks, as was the case when I was an NHS chair under the last Labour Government, not the years for which people are now having to wait. They have introduced the Employment Rights Bill and the industrial strategy—I could go on. However, the Bill, as it is currently planned, risks undermining some of those excellent initiatives.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady is always fair-minded in the Chamber and outside. She will recognise that 2.5 million, or perhaps as many as 3 million, more disabled people entered the workforce under the last Conservative Government. Does she share my concerns that the Bill could undermine the ability of people with disabilities to enter the labour market?

[Debbie Abrahams]

We have to ensure that that does not happen. There are risks: I am being very honest about that.

As we heard in the evidence that my Committee received as part of our “Pathways to Work” inquiry, ours is an ageing society, with worse health than other advanced economies as a result of the austerity policies of the previous Government, including the cuts in support for working-aged people. According to a very good report—published in 2018, so before the pandemic—if we improved the health of those in the areas with the worst health in the country, we would increase our productivity by more than £13 billion a year. We need to look at that in the round.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

Just last week, the Health Secretary made an announcement about redirecting health support to the more deprived areas. Does my hon. Friend welcome that, and does she think it will help to improve the health outcomes of people in those areas?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I have not yet seen the details, but it is a subject that I raised, and, as we know, the funding will follow.

Covid exacerbated these problems, as did the mental health crisis that we have experienced in the United Kingdom, especially among young people. A UK Millennium Cohort study shows that the key drivers of the NEETS levels are poverty and austerity, as well as other issues faced by families.

Let me get back to the Bill. I thank the Government for the concessions that they have made to date to protect existing PIP claimants and people on UC LCWRA with severe conditions or terminal diagnoses. Th growing evidence of the potential harms that they would have experienced was significant, and it was the right thing to do. However, people who are newly disabled or who acquire a health condition from November 2026 will also need help with their extra costs. The New Economics Foundation has estimated that 150,000 people will be pushed into poverty as a result of no longer being eligible for PIP.

[Maya Ellis (Ribble Valley) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

No—I am sorry, but I will not get an extra minute.

Pushing people into poverty will, in itself, worsen their condition. It will make it easier for people to live independently, including going to work, if they get money through PIP.

There is still confusion about the PIP review. Will it be co-produced with disabled people and their organisations? If so, why are we saying that the outcome of that review, and the new PIP assessment, is predetermined at four points? Therein lies the problem. Most of us are aware that this dog’s breakfast of a Bill is being driven by the need to get four points to the Office for Budget Responsibility to enable it to be scored for the Budget. The Governor of the Bank of England has said that we have to stop over-interpreting the OBR’s forecasts, which, as we know, are fallible.

I urge the Government to remove the reference to four points in clause 5. We can table amendments, but the Government should put a commitment to the co-production of the new PIP assessment review on the face of the Bill and delay the implementation of the freezing of UC LCWRA.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful case. None of us should take any lectures from the Conservatives. She and I were here when the bedroom tax was introduced. We can have many moral arguments about welfare reform, but the bedroom tax saved very little in the end, which shows that this way forward is not the way to help people into work and ultimately cut our welfare bill.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I remember well the UN rapporteur saying that the Conservatives were engaged in cruelty towards people in this country who needed help the most.

What I cannot fathom is why a Labour Government are not first putting in the support and then letting it bed in, which is what will reduce the welfare bill and increase employment levels. The impact of any cuts would then not be as drastic. The starting point should never be cuts before proper support. The review led by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability, who I have a lot of respect for, is starting to look a little bit predetermined as the change in criteria will happen at the same time as the review concludes. It remains unclear how existing claimants with fluctuating conditions will be assessed, and the impact that these changes will have on the carer’s allowance. However, we do know that disability living allowance claimants and those on other legacy benefits will be assessed under the new criteria, putting almost 800,000 disabled children at risk of losing support.

The north-east region has the highest number of disabled people in England, and the number of people searching for work outpaces the number of available jobs. How on earth will cutting the health element of universal credit incentivise those people to go out and find a job that does not even exist? Since PIP is an in-work benefit, restricting the very support that could keep people in work will only help to increase unemployment. All of this for £2.5 billion of savings, when we know that savings can be made elsewhere and when we know that those with the broadest shoulders could pay more. Instead, we are once again making disabled people pay the price for the economic mess that the Conservative party left us.

As it stands, we are being asked to vote blind today. There is no new Bill, no new explanatory notes and no fully updated impact assessment. There is no time for sufficient scrutiny, and no formal consultation has taken place with disabled people. The majority of employment support will not be in place until the end of the decade, and Access to Work remains worse than ever before. We are creating a two-tier, possibly three-tier, benefit system, and we know for certain that disabled people are going to be worse off. This is not a responsible way for any of us to legislate. It is predicted that disabled people will lose on average £4,500 per year, yet we know they already need an extra £1,095 per month just to have the same standard of living as those in non-disabled households. There is a reason why 138 organisations representing disabled people are against this Bill, and there is a reason why not a single organisation has come out in support of it.

I am pleading with MPs today to please do not do this. For those on my own Labour Benches, staying loyal to your party today may feel good in this place, but once you go home and are in your individual constituency, the reality of this will hit—and it will hit very hard.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Will the hon. Member give way?

Welfare Reform

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her statement. I absolutely agree that we must reform our social security system; under the previous Government, it neither supported nor protected disabled people. I am also very supportive of the principles that the Government have set out.

May I query some of the points that the Secretary of State has raised, however, particularly about a new PIP assessment process under the PIP review that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability will be undertaking? The Secretary of State said that the four-point requirement will not apply until November 2026, and that the review will report in November 2026, but surely the PIP review should determine the new process. If this is being truly co-produced with disabled people and their organisations, the review should determine the new process, the new points and the new descriptors. We should not predetermine it as four points now.

[Liz Kendall]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question, and I look forward to giving evidence to the Select Committee about our overall proposals. The Bill brings forward a four-point requirement for all new PIP claims after 2026; I have been very clear that that will apply only to new claimants. We are also committed to the wider review of PIP so that it is fit for the future. That will include considering the assessment criteria, the activities, descriptors and associated points to ensure that they properly reflect the impact of disability in today’s world. The review will conclude by autumn 2026, and we will then implement as quickly as possible any changes arising from it.

We have to get the right balance here. I have been a long-standing champion of co-production, including when I was the shadow Minister for social care. We have to do that properly, but the four-point minimum will be in place for new claimants as we look to make changes for the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Previous changes in eligibility for disability benefits have resulted in significant adverse health impacts, including an additional 600 suicides in 2010 and 130,000 more people with new onset mental health conditions in 2017. What estimates have the Government undertaken of the impacts on health of the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, which is due to have its Second Reading next week?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I am looking forward to answering questions about these matters in front of the Committee on Wednesday morning. We are working very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that the health and care needs of people who lose benefits as a result of this process are met.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for what she said about resolving the issues with the application process for Access to Work. Will she also kindly reassure disabled people about the future of Access to Work, and that there will not be cuts in the budget for it?

[Liz Kendall]

Our reforms to Access to Work are not about savings; they are about ensuring that this brilliant service is available to more people in future. We are also looking at how it might be delivered—whether it will continue to be delivered through the Department, or through an arm’s length body—or, indeed, an organisation run by and for disabled people. This is a big opportunity to make changes to a brilliant programme, and I know that the Select Committee will engage with us on this.

Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I will be brief. I want to draw Members’ attention to a report published on Friday that provides evidence of the impact by constituency. It clearly shows the impact on northern areas: an average of £269 per working adult in the north-east, and similar in the north-west and in Yorkshire and Humber. The cumulative impact could be tens of millions of pounds for each constituency.

The impact on local economies, which we have not explored in great detail, is significant. My constituency of Oldham East and Saddleworth will lose £15 million a year, which will have a huge impact on our local economy. Importantly, the financial losses will be highest in the constituencies with the lowest life expectancies, which means that health inequalities are likely to widen even further.

Welfare Reform

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement. I absolutely agree: our social security system is not fit for purpose. The measures, particularly those to increase employment support by £1 billion a year and to increase the standard allowance of universal credit, which the Opposition failed to do in government, will be positively felt.

I appreciate the difficult financial circumstances that we face. Despite the Opposition’s assertion that £5 billion is not a huge figure, this is the largest cut in social security support since 2015. There are alternative and more compassionate ways to balance the books, rather than on the backs of disabled people. I absolutely and fundamentally believe that my right hon. Friend is on the right course, but I implore my party to try to bed in our reforms before we make the cuts, as others have asked.

There is so much evidence of the adverse effects that the Conservative party had through cuts to support and restrictions to eligibility criteria when it was in government, including the deaths of vulnerable people. That cannot be repeated. I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend published as a matter of urgency the Government’s analysis of the impacts, particularly mental health impacts, and outlined when we are expected to respond.

[Liz Kendall]

I thank my hon. Friend for her response. We will publish the equality and poverty impact analyses alongside the spring statement. I know that she is a lifelong champion of sick and disabled people, and she has rightly raised concerns, including through the Select Committee, of vital issues such as safeguarding. I look forward to receiving the Select Committee’s report on that in order to learn from the evidence that it received. Although this is a substantial package with those estimated savings, spending on working-age sickness and disability benefits will continue to rise over this Parliament. The last forecast was that they would continue to rise by £18 billion. As she says, these are important issues, and we need to work to get this right to ensure that proper support is in place for people. I genuinely look forward to working with the Select Committee to get all these proposals right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that there will be an analysis alongside the Green Paper on the impacts it will have on poverty, employment and health?

Social Security Benefits

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I will start by commenting on the contribution made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger). First, it is really important that in this place we use evidence, to help ensure that we have effective, evidence-based policy. When we are using policy-based evidence, that is quite dangerous. I am referring to his remarks about conditionality. I refer him to the evidence, such as the two-year study undertaken by the University of York, which showed that there was no evidence to support tough sanctions. People have lost their lives because of sanctions, and that study showed that there was no evidence to support stopping somebody’s social security support—their money that they use to live—for up to two years, because that was the period that the Government of the day said benefits could be stopped for. That has real-life consequences.

I can also refer the shadow Minister to his own Cabinet Office reports, which showed that sanctions were not effective in getting people into work. We all need to be very responsible in what we say.

[Danny Kruger]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

No, I am sorry but I am not going to give way.

As a former public health consultant, I can also say that the key drivers of ill health are socioeconomic determinants. There is so much evidence for that, going back decades, and I wonder why Conservative Members are not familiar with it—whether it is just not palatable to them, or it is inconvenient. Much more recently, the covid inquiry that we debated a couple of weeks ago showed very clearly that one of the reasons why we had such a poor experience, both in terms of morbidity and mortality—more than any other country in Europe—was our ill health. It does a real disservice to the people who have lost their lives or are enduring long covid at the moment, to their families and their memories, to suggest that it is something else, let alone to the people who are—

[Danny Kruger]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

No, I am not going to give way. [Interruption.] I am not going to give way.

I welcome the social security order and, in particular, what my right hon. Friend the Minister has said about it. It was an absolute pleasure to serve on the Select Committee when he was its Chair, and in this respect I agree with the shadow Minister: my right hon. Friend’s transfer from the Select Committee to his ministerial position is very welcome. We all appreciate his gravitas and experience, but also his common decency in the role.

I want to talk about the context of this uprating order and the importance of our social security system in providing, at the very least, a safety net for people when they need it, and from cradle to grave, like the NHS. Unfortunately, though, over the past 14 to 15 years, the adequacy of support for people on low incomes has been dramatically eroded, particularly for people of working age—again, contrary to what the shadow Minister has said. Between 2010 and 2012, the uprating was about 1.5%; between 2012 and 2016, it was 1%; and between 2016 and 2020, it was zero. The average annual consumer prices index increase for each of those years was about 3%.

There has been a steady and consistent erosion in the value of social security support, which has affected the value of universal credit, jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, income support, housing benefit, child tax credit, working tax credit and child benefit. The Resolution Foundation has estimated that this erosion was equivalent to a cut of £20 billion a year from social security support for working-age people. That is clearly not well understood by the Conservative party.

Something else that is not well understood is that these are predominantly people in low-paid work. The vast majority of people in receipt of working-age social security support are, or have been, working people—that is something for us all to consider. Only a tiny proportion of DWP spending is spent on jobseeker’s allowance, for example—it is 0.001% of the current budget. As is evidenced in the Work and Pensions Committee’s report from last year, which I invite shadow Ministers to read, out-of-work support is at the lowest level in real terms since 1912. This is not a generous system; according to OECD comparisons, we are not supporting people in the way that a civilised society as well off as we are should do.

The consequences of inadequate social security are clear. Last week’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation poverty report made for bleak reading—again, I invite people to read it. Over one in five people in the UK are in poverty; that is 21%, or 14.3 million people. Of those, 8.1 million are working-age adults. Some 4.3 million children are in poverty—three in 10 among the population as a whole, while in my constituency the figure is one in two—and 1.9 million of those in poverty are pensioners.

Disabled people are at greater risk of poverty, partly by virtue of the additional costs that they face due to their disability and ill health, and partly due to the barriers to work that disabled people face. Disability employment has flatlined; when it comes to being in work, the gap between people who are not disabled and those who are has been about 30% for the past 14 years or so. It went down by about 1%. Some 16 million people in the UK are disabled—nearly one in four—and almost four in 10 families have at least one person who is disabled. The poverty rate for disabled people, which is 30%, is 10 percentage points higher than it is for non-disabled people. The rate is even higher—50%—for those living with a long-term, limiting mental health condition, compared with 29% for people with a physical disability or another type of disability.

Other groups of people are also disproportionately more likely to live in poverty, including former carers, people from ethnic minority communities and lone parents, but given the media speculation there has been about the future of disability support, I want to focus on that. Last year’s Select Committee report on benefit levels set out a wide range of evidence suggesting that benefit levels are too low and that claimants are often unable to afford daily living costs and extra costs associated with having a health condition or disability. Although the Select Committee supports the Government’s ambition to get Britain working and a social security system that supports work, these ambitions are not achievable within a few months. Meanwhile, people are barely clinging on.

The DWP does not have an expressed objective for how it will support claimants with daily essential living costs. In the Select Committee’s report we recommended building a cross-party consensus to take this forward, and for the Government to outline and benchmark objectives linked to living costs to measure the effectiveness of benefit levels, and to make changes alongside annual uprating. I would welcome my right hon. Friend the Minister revisiting this Select Committee report, particularly our recommendations.

I would like to set out the consequences of our currently inadequate social security system. From peer-reviewed articles, we know that for every 1% increase in child poverty, six babies per 100,000 live births fail to reach their first birthday. That is the consequence of living in poverty for children. The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), because of his medical training, will know much of this, but a rewiring of the brain of children living in poverty affects them for the rest of their lives.

In another peer-reviewed piece published in 2016 in a BMJ journal, entitled “First, do no harm”, a metadata analysis of the impacts of the changes to and reassessment of the work capability assessment between 2010 and 2013 in 149 local authority areas in England found that, for each additional 10,000 people who were reassessed, there were an additional six suicides, 2,700 additional cases of mental health problems and over 7,000 more antidepressant scripts. This is evidence.

Many Members will know of my previous campaigns, and I want to refer to the deaths we have seen of social security claimants whose benefits have been stopped. I mention again Errol Graham, a 52-year-old Nottingham man with a severe mental health condition, who basically starved to death after his social security support was stopped. There are so many others I could mention, and I pay tribute to the families who have campaigned on their behalf for justice, because it is quite horrific.

Talking about people surviving our social security system, there is the case of TP—I will use his initials—also a 52-year-old man, who had worked all his life. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and, sadly, his diagnosis was terminal. He was trying to be migrated from his particular incapacity support to universal credit, and he lost all his disability premiums. He was one of the litigants in a case about transitional protections when migrating from ESA and disability premiums to universal credit. This is an example of somebody who has worked all their life, and four out of five disabilities and health conditions are acquired—it could happen to any one of us, and I would just like us to consider that.

In another case, AB was born with congenital cerebral palsy and worked for 25 years, but then could not go on. If I read out the whole story, we would all be in tears, because it is just heartrending, describing the indignity of having to rely on such low-level support.

I will leave it there, but I know my right hon. Friend the Minister takes this very seriously, and I hope all of us here will work towards making the social security system more adequate for those people.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrats spokesperson.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I welcome the “Keep Britain Working” review but, according to last year’s DWP accounts, £4.2 billion of benefits were underpaid to claimants, and the claimants most affected were disabled people. What will the Government do to ensure that disabled people who may not be able to work get the money to which they are entitled?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

It is very important that disabled people get the money to which they are entitled. There will always be people who are not working, and we need to make sure there is good support for them. As I said a moment ago, we will set out our proposals on improving the assessment process in the upcoming Green Paper, but we are also very interested in hearing about the Select Committee’s proposals.

Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

It is absolutely right that fraud against the taxpayer, whoever it is by, is detected, that money is recovered and that future fraud is prevented. We saw fraud during covid when, for example, the abuse of the bounce back loan scheme cost the taxpayer nearly £5.5 billion. There was also covid-related contract fraud, such as the purchasing of unusable personal protective equipment, which was outrageous.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) mentioned, the National Audit Office identified six areas of fraud risk against the public sector, estimated to cost the taxpayer between £55 billion and £85 billion. They are grant fraud, which is the misappropriation or misuse of grant money; service user fraud, which we have focused on today; procurement and commercial fraud; income evasion; internal fraud and corruption; and regulatory fraud.

In its 2023-24 annual report and accounts, the DWP estimated that it made overpayments—including fraud and error—of £9.7 billion out of the £269 billion that it spent. That is 6.7% of related expenditure. However, it also made underpayments of £4.2 billion—that is 1.6% of related expenditure—up from £3.5 billion the previous year, because of underpayments of disability living allowance. Within that, there were different levels of fraud for different benefit types. For universal credit, the level of overpayment for the same period is 13.2%. That is down from a peak of 21% in early 2020, during the covid pandemic, when some of the controls were suspended to speed up the application process. In fact, by value, two thirds of all overpayments are on universal credit—£6.5 billion out of £9.7 billion.

The DWP has tried to argue that the increase in fraud in the social security system reflects an increase in fraudulent behaviour in society. However, that does not explain why the overpayments are concentrated in universal credit accounts, or why, for example, there was a 10% reduction in fraud incidents reported in the crime survey for England and Wales between 2023 and 2024. The National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee agree. In its recent report on the DWP’s annual accounts, the PAC said that it was not convinced by the DWP’s claims, adding that that was a “dangerous mindset”. The Committee also produced the following context, which we should all consider:

“It is concerning that DWP is not providing a decent service to all its customers, who include some of the most vulnerable in society and some of those with the most complex needs. In particular, claimants of disability benefits, including Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), are receiving an unacceptably poor service including processing times compared with those receiving Universal Credit (UC) and State Pension.”

I worry that many of those disabled claimants, made vulnerable by their circumstances, are receiving less than the DWP estimates that they are entitled to. I believe that there is a genuine commitment from Ministers to change the DWP’s culture and build trust with its service users, but the Bill will be seen by many as more evidence not to trust the DWP and not to engage. I am not alone in that; in evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry on safeguarding vulnerable claimants, Citizens Advice raised concerns that the failure to engage is the second largest category that the DWP classes as fraud, and that when the enhanced review team identifies a household as having potentially made a fraudulent claim, payments may be immediately suspended. Citizens Advice recommended that the detriment caused by such a suspension should not take place while the fraud review process is ongoing. Disability Rights UK, UK Finance and others have raised concerns about the lack of systemic safeguards in the Bill. To their credit, Ministers have accepted that and will look at it as a whole.

However, Ministers—particularly those from the last Conservative Government—will remember the housing benefit fraud allegations, in which more than 200,000 people were wrongly accused of and investigated for housing benefit fraud and error last June. An AI algorithm—which the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), just said we should be using more of—incorrectly identified people as potentially behaving fraudulently, and they were investigated. That is really serious. What level of investigation of innocent people do Ministers consider acceptable?

Policy in Practice has also raised concerns about underclaiming, barriers to accessing support, the lack of value for money of the DWP’s fraud detection, prevention and recovery system, which addresses less than 5% of the debt owed, and how the focus on fraudulent claims is

“spoiling the system for the 97% of ‘genuine’ benefit claims”,

fuelling beliefs about benefit cheats, and detracting from

“the millions of households that are rightfully and legitimately supported by a social safety net designed to be there for all of us when we need it.”

I have questions for the Ministers, some of which I have raised with them before. What risk assessments of the Bill have been undertaken? I know that there is an impact assessment and a human rights assessment. What are the risks, what mitigations have been put in place, and will the Government publish them? How are safeguarding concerns, including the Caldicott principles and the responsibilities of the Caldicott guardian—which the DWP has, to its credit, now put in place—addressed in the Bill? This Bill is too important for us to mess it up and for innocent people to become the victims.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.