Debbie Abrahams
MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth · Labour · United Kingdom
“We cannot afford to march to the edge of action, only to falter when we have finally shown the collective action of the UK and our allies to be a powerful threat against breaches of international humanitarian law.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the name sets out, the Global Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Sanctions Regulations 2026—I will just call them the new regulations—expand the former regulations so that serious breaches of international humanitarian law around the world now constitute designate-able activity.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I, too, welcome these regulations on global human rights and international humanitarian law sanctions. We know that sanctions are a vital tool for the Government to use to promote our British values, particularly in relation to the rule of law, democracy and human rights.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One of the chief catalysts for this action was the Israeli Government, under Benjamin Netanyahu, making a clear statement that they intend to bury the prospect of a Palestinian state, and with it the two-state solution, through illegal settlement expansions, particularly in the case of the E1 project.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Although I wholeheartedly support the replacement of the previous regulations with the new ones, two questions remain, which I would like to put to the Minister. How will the Government monitor those who commit acts that may make them liable to designation? How swiftly will we act on reliable reports of such acts?”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Foreign Secretary was exactly right to say in his statement on 8 September: “If the occupation is illegal, do we want to maintain, at the level of principle, normal economic relationships? We say no.” —[ Official Report , 8 September 2026; Vol. 790, c.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“That was just the intervention that I needed. There have also been the cases of Jodey Whiting, Mark Wood and many, many others. Our report recognises the significance of every death and harm experienced by claimants, and the impact of these cases on their loved ones. We know that 40 deaths and 13 serious harms of claimants were investigated by the Department in 2023-24 alone as part of its internal process reviews, but in common with the National Audit Office’s 2020 report, we believe that the actual numbers are much higher. We heard evidence that the process of accessing DWP support, and some DWP policies themselves, can create or exacerbate existing vulnerabilities. For example, sanctions or the threat of sanctions can lead to material deprivation, stress, and the deterioration of physical and mental health.”
House of Commons15 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend for her question. On the pathways to work Green Paper, one of our recommendations is that any analysis undertaken by the CMA’s team should be published and made available. More generally, we also ask that analysis of the impact of key policies and legislation on the health and wellbeing of claimants is considered beforehand and responded to appropriately.”
House of Commons15 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The right hon. Member makes an excellent point. There are some systems, but the inquiry found that they are very fragmented and a little too ad hoc. This is about making a coherent case that this is everybody’s business. Yes, we should be proactively identifying and assessing the vulnerabilities of claimants when they present, and we should be able to signpost them to other agencies that may, for example, have a statutory duty of care.”
House of Commons15 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend and thank her for all that she has done since becoming a member of the Select Committee. I wholeheartedly agree with everything she says, and I do hope that the Government response comes sooner rather than later.”
House of Commons15 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend for that important question. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), this is really important. The bedrock of the report is that safeguarding needs to be integrated into policy development at all stages and at all levels of the organisation, and before policies and legislation are implemented, so it is absolutely key to the legislation that is being considered and that will be going through the House.”
House of Commons15 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is my vice-Chair on the Committee, and I thank her for all that she does. The culture is one of the key things, and both the statutory duty and making sure we have a system-based approach to safeguarding are absolutely key. I will never forget a quote from one of our witnesses, who had lived experience of using the system, when she said she felt that “a system that is meant to wrap its arms around us is strangling us”. That just should not happen in this country, and with such an important Department.”
House of Commons15 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In addition to calling for the release of all hostages, Tom Fletcher, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator, asked last night what action we will tell future generations that we each took “to stop the 21st century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza.” What action will the Government take if, in the next 24 hours, Israel does not allow aid into Gaza?”
House of Commons14 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I basically want to thank the Minister. This has been quite a robust and rough journey, but he has listened to comments from across the House, analysed the arguments we have made and listened to the other place. I think this is now going to be a very strong Act that will help enormously to shift our global supply chains and get the transparency I think everybody in this House wants, so I thank him.”
House of Commons14 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On 15 May we will commemorate the 77th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, which saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes and dispossessed, and it still continues today. I pay tribute to Ministers for the diplomacy they are engaged in and for the recent memorandum of understanding that was agreed with Palestine, but the children of Gaza cannot wait weeks and months. They need food and water now. What more can we do?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons12 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons7 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I wholeheartedly support the Minister in his calls for de-escalation. I reiterate my condolences to the families who have lost loved ones in the attacks last month and overnight. About 20% of my constituents have Pakistani-Kashmiri heritage but, for our common humanity, we should extend our condolences to anyone of any religion or origin, from either side of the line of control, who has lost a loved one. Will the Minister confirm which international allies he has been working with to de-escalate tensions? Has the Minister been in contact with the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan, which was established back in 1951 and has extensive intelligence in the region? If so, what has been said?”
House of Commons7 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I, too, associate myself with the condolences for the innocent families who have become victims of this appalling attack. It is important that there is an evidence-based investigation and I hope that, from what the Minister has said, Pakistan is assisting India in identifying the perpetrators and ensuring they are brought to justice. Tensions are certainly high, both within India and Pakistan. I appreciate the Minister’s remarks on the assistance being provided at the moment, but can this be used as an opportunity to also look at the longer- term issues that Kashmir has faced for decades?”
House of Commons29 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I commend my hon. Friend on all the work he is doing—I know that a huge amount is going on behind the scenes—and particularly on the memorandum of understanding and the additional funding. When I hosted a meeting of the Britain-Palestine all-party parliamentary group last night, it was quite clear how grateful Prime Minister Mustafa was for the stance that the UK was taking, and that he saw it as part of a sequence of steps towards recognition. Yes, he wanted that as soon as possible, but he recognised the steps that needed to be taken, because of the difficult international context, to ensure that recognition would make a difference. However, who among our other allies, either the E4 or the Five Eyes—except the US, obviously—has provided a similar sort of MOU that can be built on?”
House of Commons29 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I commend my right hon. Friend for making a fantastic speech. We should also commend the good owners of football clubs, such as Frank Rothwell and his family, who have made such a difference to Oldham Athletic. He has not just ploughed money into the club, but raised millions of pounds for Alzheimer’s research. May I also associate myself with the comments from the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) about Football Families for Justice’s efforts to get an independent and comprehensive strategy on dementia for footballers, who are four to five times more likely to suffer from dementia?”
House of Commons28 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I recognise the difficulties that my right hon. Friend is facing, with the fiscal challenges and so on that she inherited. I also support the reforms that my right hon. Friend the Work and Pensions Secretary has set out. However, all the evidence points to the fact that the cuts to health and disability benefits will lead to increased poverty, including severe poverty, and worsened health conditions. How will making people sicker and poorer help to drive our economy up and get people into jobs?”
House of Commons26 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome the energy efficiency measures that my right hon. Friend mentions, which will really make a difference to many families in the future, but what can the Government and energy providers do to help families struggling to pay their energy bills today?”
House of Commons18 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons18 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons18 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons17 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. Does he agree that the detention of human rights activists, such as Khurram Parvez, is particularly egregious? That individual has been detained without trial for several years and has always fought for the rights of others. Perhaps my hon. Friend can persuade the Minister to inquire after his wellbeing.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are various conflicts across the world at the moment and conflicts always require mediators to end them. Given our history with the continent, can the Minister explain why the Government think that the UK does not have a role as a mediator?”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In January it was reported that nearly 7,000 construction firms were on the brink of insolvency—that is on top of the 4,000 that folded last year. A major cause of this is payment delays by large contractors. Given that project bank accounts, which protect against payment delays, are used by only some Departments, will the Minister act where the previous Government failed to do so and introduce these accounts across all Departments?”
House of Commons6 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“More than one in three SEND children in Oldham is diagnosed with autism or a neurodivergent condition, which is above the national average. We know that there are implications for educational attainment and work. Has there been an assessment of the increase in children with autism or neurodivergent conditions? If so, what were its conclusions?”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“T3. The International Court of Justice delivered its advisory opinion last July, in which it made crystal clear that the illegal settlements at that time were just that—unlawful. Yet we have seen threats to displace Gazans and tanks on the west bank. When will the Government deliver their response to the advisory opinion? Will it be before the conference in Switzerland in a few weeks?”
House of Commons25 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is clear that the rules-based order established after the second world war is under extreme threat from oppressors and bullies who think that they can just take what they want—and I am not just talking about Putin. A raft of sanctions were introduced in 2022; why does my right hon. Friend think that previous sanctions failed to curb Russia, and what more do we need to do to organisations that use different measures to circumvent sanctions?”
House of Commons24 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On that point, and following on from the speech by the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), is not the key issue whether the UK will abide by international law, the rules-based order and the systems that were set up after the second world war?”
House of Commons12 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In 2013, the then coalition Government reduced the health inequalities weighting in the NHS formula, with the result that less money went to deprived areas. That was despite evidence that between 2001 and 2011, every £10 million invested in such areas resulted in four fewer men and two fewer women dying early. Can my hon. Friend reassure Government Members that that health inequalities weighting will be reinstated so that we can ensure that deprived areas get the funding they need and that lives are saved?”
House of Commons11 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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—”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons3 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons3 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons3 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons3 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons3 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons3 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons3 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons3 February 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗