Andrew Western MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 26 Feb 2025 · Child Maintenance Service · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He has a long history of working not just on CMS issues but on child poverty more broadly, and his expertise is of great value to the House. I will say a little more about domestic abuse and financial abuse later in my contribution, but I reassure him that the focus we had in the consultation on the proposed abolition of direct pay was intended as a specific response to that issue. I have seen appalling examples in cases that have crossed my desk as a Minister of people who can message their former partner in the form of a comment on a bank transaction. They will transfer a penny—they have a direct payment in place—along with an abusive term or some form of triggering harassment of a former victim of theirs. That shows that while a parent may have moved away from that unsafe and dangerous environment, they are never fully away when direct pay is engaged.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Child Maintenance Service · Hansard source

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  I should have known that my hon. Friend would be in his place. He is keen on an Adjournment debate—we all know that. This is where I out myself as an imposter, because I am not the Minister with direct responsibility for the CMS, but I am very happy to put him in touch with the Department’s Minister in the House of Lords, who I am sure would be happy to have a conversation with him. Turning back to the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire and the points he made about calculation reforms, a broad review of the child maintenance calculation is being conducted. It is examining the scope for change and improvements, while maintaining the simplicity of the calculation. It can be very frustrating for paying parents who are waiting to have income reassessed, and for receiving parents when they are aware that a paying parent has received a substantial income increase. The calculation at present generally looks at income from the previous tax year and it is only when somebody’s income has changed with a divergence of more than 25% in either direction that it triggers an in-year evaluation. We are looking at ways we can change that, while recognising that we need to encourage payment compliance and more sustainable arrangements in all that we do. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that the £20 application fee he referred to was removed in 2024, getting rid of a financial barrier to parents wishing to access the CMS. Proposals to include more types of taxable income held by HMRC within the standard maintenance calculation are being considered, alongside the review of the child maintenance calculation. Turning to enforcement—my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) also raised this issue—I can understand that for some receiving parents there are frustrations with how quickly the CMS secures payment from non-compliant paying parents. We have seen significant improvements to speed up action when payments first break down and to target enforcement action more effectively. We are changing the process at present to make direct deductions something we can do more swiftly where issues emerge. We have a range of strong enforcement powers that can be used against those who consistently refuse to meet their obligations to provide financial support to their children, and in the past year to September 2024 the CMS has collected £16.8 million from paying parents with civil enforcement actions in process. Collections through civil enforcement have followed a general upwards trajectory in recent years. For comparison, the equivalent figure in 2021 was £10.3 million. I would like to finish by talking about the improvements to customer experience and digital services that the Department has been introducing. Since 2020, as part of the DWP service modernisation programme, the Department has transformed the ways in which customers can interact with the CMS, providing customers with the choice to make contact with digital routes and reducing the time taken to action change of circumstances. We continue to develop our digital offer, evaluating through user research and customer feedback, but we are committed to retaining a non-digital telephony service to ensure that no customer is excluded. As I said earlier, I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is rightly impatient, as are other Members, to see change and to see the details of our reform package following the conclusion of the recent consultation, but getting the right solution will take a little time. It is right that the changes that we make are properly considered and robust so that the CMS can continue to play not just an important role but an ever-more effective and increasingly important role in supporting children and tackling child poverty. Question put and agreed to .

• 26 Feb 2025 · Child Maintenance Service · Hansard source

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  I absolutely understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. With specific reference to named caseworkers, initially for victims of domestic abuse, I will have something further to say that I think he and all hon. Members will welcome, but I take his more general point. If I may make some progress, turning to direct pay and domestic violence, financial abuse and so on, the proposals also sought views on collection fees and explored how victims and survivors of domestic abuse can be better supported. That is so important given the issues raised by the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire and the case he cited of his constituent. Overall, work is ongoing to establish the steps needed to really improve the service, taking account of the views of parents. Those will be set out in the response to the consultation. I appreciate that he would like that to be as soon as possible; I will take that away. To drill down on the issue of domestic abuse, the scale of violence against women and girls in our country is intolerable, and the Government will treat it as the national emergency that it is. Our manifesto included the mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade—we were right to do so—and I and all Ministers are focused on making that a reality. If I may, I will therefore say a little about the support that should be available. If the hon. Member wants to share specific details of the case that he referenced with me, I will take that away. The support that should be available is extensive and runs contrary to what clearly happened in the case that he outlined. We have overseen progress in providing support, with the continued roll-out of an operational team to deliver targeted support to parents subjected to the most challenging and complex domestic abuse. The team provide a tailored and discrete service to customers, which is incredibly important, giving regular progress updates. They can and do assign a named caseworker to prevent customers having to re-tell their story at each interaction. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was saying, that can be incredibly stressful for parents using the service. Caseworkers are trained to identify and refer appropriate cases within the collect and pay service to that team. More generally, the CMS consulted on a diverse range of stakeholders to review its domestic abuse training for all frontline CMS staff to ensure that caseworkers understand, recognise and respond appropriately to customers who are experiencing domestic abuse or who are survivors of domestic abuse.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Child Maintenance Service · Hansard source

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  I can see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) trying to come in. I will beat him to it and give way.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you. I have a final question, which is about an assertion that you made towards the beginning of your contribution. As I understood it, you said that the eligibility verification measure was circular because if a flag was placed on an account, we could then just request the bank account statements. To clarify, do you accept that we are only able to utilise our information-gathering powers where there is a suspicion of fraud and, therefore, that it is not a mass power? It would only be where we had information that suggested that we needed to follow up on that because of a specific concern that had come to light. Jasleen Chaggar: I accept that the Government are purporting that this is a sufficient safeguard, but I propose that it is not, because of that circularity.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I have one further question then, which is about the role that you perceive for banks and financial institutions in tackling fraud in the social security system. Could you ever countenance a scenario in which that would be of value and worth while? Jasleen Chaggar: Absolutely. We believe as much as anyone that fraud and error need to be tackled in this country. Our position is that the best way to do that is through intelligence-led policing, where there is suspicion of fraud and not just of error, that is well resourced. In relation to error, as I have said, we think that making the benefits system easier to navigate in the first place, and the DWP getting its own house in order to avoid its own errors, are far better, more proportionate and privacy-preserving solutions than the ones proposed in the Bill.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Can I just clarify, though? We have heard testimony from HMRC today that it receives bulk data on every interest-bearing account in the country, not only where there is suspicion. How do you perceive the power in the Bill, which you have described as unprecedented, to be distinct from those powers? Jasleen Chaggar: There is another difference between HMRC recovering money and the DWP recovering money. When you think about the types of individuals these powers will be recovering money from, they are among some of the most vulnerable in our society. There are people living on the breadline, disabled people, elderly people and carers, who will all be dragged into this surveillance. The risk of errors caused by the automated system that is proposed will, therefore, have a dispro- portionate effect on those groups of people. There is a difference, if that is the case, between the powers being used by HMRC and the DWP.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Your last point about stop and search and decisions being made purely based on protected characteristics speaks to what you said earlier about the perceived impact on disabled people. Are you suggesting that the eligibility-verification measure would directly discriminate against disabled people, or is it merely that disabled people make up a larger number of the cohort? Ellen Lefley: They make up a larger number of the cohort, so we would analyse a prima facie indirect discrimination potential risk there, which would then need to be justified as being necessary and proportionate. The proportionality assessment of course is for Parliament, but we consider that a significant amount of scrutiny is required not only because of the privacy impacts, but because there is that clear indirect discrimination aspect. I am not alleging direct—

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  All the powers pertaining to the DWP—the five principal areas in the DWP’s proposals—so information gathering, debt recovery, penalties reform, powers of search and seizure, and EVM. Joshua Reddaway: Okay. To step back, we have been looking at a general trend of rising levels of benefit fraud for a few years. Actually, it has come down a little since covid, because there was a blip then, but if we take covid out, the levels were rising anyway. Currently, it is more than £10 billion, if you include the bit of benefits that HMRC pays—obviously, that is coming down with universal credit. I do not think that what is in the Bill will solve that; what is in the Bill will support tackling it. This is about adding a few tools to the DWP toolkit. The key thing is that prevention is better than recovery. DWP is really good—one of the best in the world, as far as we can see—at knowing how much fraud is occurring; I am afraid it is not very good at saying why it occurs. In particular, DWP is not great at saying what it is about the way in which it administers benefits that enables fraud to occur or error to happen. For some time, we have been advocating for DWP to get a much more granular view of its control environment. I think that, given how I interpret the capital rules here—it is an EVM exercise—it is doing that. This is one of the places where DWP said, “Actually, our control over capital at the moment is, frankly, to ask people how much capital they have,” which left it fairly exposed to the risk that people did not tell them the truth. Several times, the Public Accounts Committee asked DWP if it had the powers it needed, and several times has said, “The one area we need to explore is capital.” The challenge for this Committee is to work out whether that proposal is reasonable and includes enough oversight, given the privacy issues. In terms of there being a real problem behind it, however, I can confirm that there is a control-level issue that DWP is trying to resolve. The other issues that the Bill tries to deal with on enforcement are similar. If we look at the impact assessment, the EVM was £500 million a year when fully rolled out and operational—that is a significant dent, but only a dent, in the £10 billion. I want to be clear: yes, I do think that there will be an impact. Is it sufficient? No. Is it meant to be sufficient? I doubt it. I think that DWP knows that, and that it has a very hard slog ahead of it. I will try to hold it to account—I am afraid it is your Department—on that hard slog of understanding where fraud is coming in and where error is happening, and put in controls step by step to improve it. There are no shortcuts in that. Richard Las: My reflection is that fraud is inherently difficult to identify and potentially more difficult to investigate at times. How do you identify fraud? If I think about HMRC, you need information and to be able to triangulate information to understand the risks in front of you so that you can identify the highest risk. Sometimes you will not know what that risk is, or whether it is fraud or error, but it will point you in a direction. I feel that as an agency, if you have fraud, you need a good bedrock of information to understand the environment and to identify risk. A lot of that information can be information you gather from your customer—in our case, a taxpayer—or third party information. It is information that we can use to triangulate and verify. We do that regularly with lots of different information sets. Once you come to investigate and deal with fraud, it is obvious to everybody, but people do not always co-operate, so you need powers that allow you to compel people to co-operate or powers that allow you to secure information and evidence in a way that you otherwise would not be able to do, because people would not do that. On the general framework, we are always looking to improve our basis for powers and our ability to use them. Certainly I feel that much of what is included in the Bill is powers that HMRC already has in many respects. We use those powers, we would argue, in a proportionate and necessary way, and there are controls and safeguards about how we do that. It is a difficult business with fraud. If you do not have some of those tools at your disposal, you are working with one arm behind your back.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Following on from one of my colleagues’ earlier questions, can I come back to the Bill’s ability to clamp down on and look at error? Would it be your view that in addition to identifying instances of capital fraud or of people living abroad or being abroad for longer than they should be, there is also the potential for the eligibility verification measure to capture overpayments? It would therefore ultimately have the benefit of reducing the level of debt that somebody might find themselves in were that to go undetected for a longer period of time. Joshua Reddaway: I think that is a fair comment, given that I said it does not really deal with error. I was really referring to the enforcement powers under PSFA. I think PSFA do other stuff that is in the error space, but the enforcement stuff is not. The enforcement stuff for DWP also will not really be in the error space. However, you are quite right that any data matching is an opportunity to detect error, and DWP are used to that. For example, when they are doing targeted case reviews, that will be detecting error as well as fraud. What we know from the statistics is that DWP believes there is more fraud than error in that space, but I entirely accept the premise of your question, and I should have made that part clear.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q What I am saying is that there would not be suspicion, because we would have absolutely no way of knowing. Is it your position that we should not attempt to address that issue, because there can never be a suspicion of what somebody has in their bank account without looking? Jasleen Chaggar: I think that there are ways to address this. We are a civil liberties organisation, and our job is to be a watchdog and to ensure that privacy rights are preserved. I do not have a solution for how the police should find out whether someone is suspicious, but we should not sacrifice the privacy rights of us all just to find out whether we should be suspicious of someone when no suspicion exists. As I said, it is a disproportionate power.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q That was since the pandemic. The overall figure is £35 billion, and last year it was £9.7 billion. Ellen Lefley: I am grateful. It is a difficult one. For example, we could have almost zero crime in this country if everyone’s house had 24/7 surveillance installed. There will always be a way of decreasing privacy to increase state surveillance and therefore reduce unwanted behaviour, but the balance needs to be struck. Justice’s view is that when the state is getting new powers to investigate people’s private affairs, the balance is struck by having that reasonable suspicion threshold, which requires reasonable grounds for believing that a crime has been committed. That ensures that the powers given to the state in any primary legislation are not open to abuse or arbitrariness. Of course, the laws in the statute book must be written narrowly so that they protect rights on the face of it, rather than being written broadly and relying on the self-restraint of future Administrations to exercise them proportionately.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I have a very general question to open with. You will be more aware than I am of the changing nature of fraud and the increasing sophistication that we see from perpetrators. Do you agree, in general, that the DWP’s powers would need to be modernised in order to cope with that shift? Also, what are your views on the general provisions within the Bill, where it pertains to the DWP, to detect and prevent fraud? John Smart: At the risk of echoing what has been said before, I think it is critical that we modernise the approach to fraud, and the Bill is a good step towards that modernisation. The critical part of a lot of investigations now—and of identifying, preventing and detecting fraud—is the use of data. Getting that data and information quickly and effectively is critical. I think the Bill will go a long way towards speeding up and broadening the available information that can be used to prevent, detect and prosecute fraud. That is a really valuable thing that we should be pushing for, because relying on pieces of paper to seek information from organisations is crazy in this day and age, when you can do it electronically and get an answer relatively quickly. If you are turning up with a piece of paper, it can take weeks or months.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q What is your view on its proportionality as a direct response to what has been a £35 billion challenge for the Department since covid? Given the increase in prevalence of both fraud and error—particularly fraud, which is estimate to have cost upwards of £7 billion—do you think that is a material consideration when assessing proportionality? Ellen Lefley: When I speak about proportionality, the degree of loss is relevant, but there is no question but that the economic wellbeing of the country is a legitimate aim. On whether measures are proportionate to achieving that aim, we must consider not only whether there is any reasonable suspicion, but the degree of external oversight. The Bill includes that consideration, and there are various ways in which some of the powers are subject to independent review. We have some suggestions as to how those independent review mechanisms can be a stronger safeguard and therefore make the measures more proportionate. For example, the independent review mechanisms seem to have the ability to access information but no power to demand it. That raises a query as to transparency and the full ability of the independent reviewer in different circumstances to meet their objectives. Also, when an independent reviewer lays their report before Parliament with recommendations and those recommendations are not going to be adopted, it might be helpful for there to be an obligation on the Department to provide reasons why not. That would be a more transparent way of ensuring that the oversight measure is as effective as intended.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Would that be the case in any preventive measure that we took in pursuit of tackling benefit fraud that did not come about as a direct result of suspicion of fraud? With anything that we try to do with the entire cohort, would we be open to that accusation? Ellen Lefley: Raising the risk of indirect discrimination when you have cohorts of the population that are disproportionately reflected in any subcommunity of the population that will be exposed to any power is a relevant consideration, so yes in that respect. When it comes to the eligibility-verification measures, the proportionality analysis is, in our view, strained because there is not that threshold of reasonable suspicion. The mere fact that benefits recipients are in receipt of public funds makes them subject to this power. Of course, that could go further; all the public servants and MPs in this room are in receipt of public funds. If that is the threshold that we as a society are happy with, some real scrutiny of its proportionality is required, because it is a power that can require private financial information.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you. I am hopeful that, through the informal conversations and the formal consultation that we are required to have on the code of practice, we will be able to set this up in such a way that everything interplays in an acceptable way. You briefly mentioned direct deduction orders. I know you have some concerns about the debt recovery power, and this is an opportunity for you to set them out. Is there anything you want to elaborate on beyond what you have just said about that element of the powers we are proposing? Eric Leenders: There are two or three key areas for us. First is the affordability assessment. I think you have heard previously that the use of the standard financial statement would be helpful in outlining essential monthly expenditure. I will come back to that point. Secondly, I believe the caps differ between the PSFA and the DWP. We think that they should be aligned, with the PFSA’s 40/20 split also applied to the DWP. It is also quite important that there is some form of de minimis, so that individuals do not find themselves without any funds whatsoever. Our thinking is something aligned to the £1,000 threshold that there is in Scotland. HMRC has a threshold of about £5,000, or £2,000 for partners paying child maintenance. We think there should be a floor, but more essential is consideration of one month’s essential expenditure. That would allow the individual to readjust their expenditure in the period when they need to consider making the payments under the deduction order, or indeed the period in which the balances are withdrawn.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Could I come back on the last point you made, Rick, and the suggestion that this treats disabled people as a distinct part of the population under different rules and measures. The Bill targets the three benefits that have the highest levels of fraud and error at present: universal credit, pension credit and employment and support allowance. I would accept that there is a higher prevalence of people who are disabled in those cohorts, but this is not restricted exclusively to disabled people. Can you elaborate a little on how you feel that disabled people, in isolation, would be treated as a separate entity? Rick Burgess: Because we are over-represented in those classes. If you choose to target it at those cohorts, you are accepting an additional level of targeting towards disabled people, which is discriminatory.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you both for joining us today. I have an overarching question about the impact of the proposed modernisation of DWP processes and whether you think that that will improve the detection of fraud and error. Joshua Reddaway: Specifically, do you mean the EVM—eligibility verification measure—stuff?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q It was not, but we will leave it there, because clearly you are not aware of the powers that I am referring to. You talk about the inclusion of error, as well as fraud, in what we are attempting to do here. Do you accept that there is the potential, through the effective use of the eligibility verification measure, to detect overpayments through error sooner, thereby reducing any overpayment because it would come to light earlier? Jasleen Chaggar: Yes, and to stop people getting into debt is an incredibly laudable aim. The question is whether we are willing to infringe the privacy rights of the entirety of the population to do that. Perhaps a more proportionate solution would be to make it easier for those benefits claimants who are making mistakes to navigate the system in the first place. Coming back to your previous point, if you were happy to send me information about those powers, I would be happy to get back to you with our position on those.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I suspect Minister Gould will have the bulk of the questions for you, Mark, but I have a very general question. There has, understandably, been a lot of discussion and questions today about the balance between people’s privacy and being able to prevent fraud. What is your overall view on whether the Bill strikes the necessary balance between the two? Mark Cheeseman: My view is that the Bill does strike that balance, and it tries to strike the balance. It is difficult, because you need to balance the ability to take action against someone who has committed fraud against the state with having fair and reasonable processes for looking at someone who has not. The purpose of an investigation is not to find fraud; it is to find fact. That is why we have professionals who are trained and have a code of ethics around objectivity; their role is to find fact, not fraud. The Bill tries to strike that balance both by having authorised officers and by having the oversight that is in place. The Government structure, in having the counter-fraud profession, provides some of that as well. My view of the Bill is that there is a fair amount of independent oversight—that is a good thing—to increase how well things are done.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q One more, if I may, Chair? Richard, one of the powers we intend to take is around search and seizure for the DWP when investigating serious and organised crime. That is a power that HMRC have had for some time. Can you reflect on what the benefits of that have been for HMRC’s operations, in terms of no longer needing to rely directly on the police to fulfil that function? Richard Las: Ultimately, it allows us to operate immediately and with real clarity. We would be under the same kind of governance and restrictions as the police would be, in terms of having to go to a court to get those warrants, but, in terms of our ability to—

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I would argue that we are accepting a different level of checking on the eligibility verification measure for everybody in receipt of those benefits. I would be perfectly happy to accept that there may be some indirect discrimination against disabled people by virtue of the fact that they are over-represented in the cohort, but are you suggesting that this would amount to direct discrimination? Rick Burgess: I think it does edge into that. There is certainly established thinking and case law that begins to establish that. The Equality and Human Rights Commission need to be brought into this urgently. There need to be public and transparent equality impact assessments, because I do not see how this does not breach a right to privacy and represent discrimination against groups who are over-represented in these cohorts.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will not ask any more questions, but I just say to Rick that I think it might be helpful for a follow-up conversation to take place. Without wishing to get into a protracted argument, there were some things that I did not recognise as part of the Bill, but clearly that is how people are feeling and how the people you represent are feeling. I am very happy to ask officials to pick up a conversation to go through the detail.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you. Richard, you made a point around the existing powers that HMRC has had, since I think 2011, to request information on every interest-bearing bank account in the country, as I understand it. Could you explain what safeguards and oversight you have in place, because that feels like a similar bulk data exercise? Do you think the oversight that we are proposing to put in place alongside these powers is equivalent, or do these powers have more or less oversight than the powers that HMRC has enjoyed for 14 years? Richard Las: It is the Finance Act 2011 that you refer to, which allows us bulk data gathering powers on information that we believe will support our functions. I guess it is not just the banks, but we do get the information on interest-bearing accounts. It is an annual exercise, not a real-time exercise. It is clearly timed in such a way that it helps us understand whether the right amount of tax has been paid on interest that has been accrued. We are talking about large accounts because in most cases people’s interest is quite small, but there will be some people who get a lot of it. We have a huge amount of controls over how we manage that information and how we use it and protect it; they are our normal requirements as with any other taxpayer data. We gather other information from third parties. We have information from merchant acquirers on transactions that businesses might make, for example. We also have information that we get from online platforms in terms of sales and things like that. It is all part of bringing that information together. HMRC very much respects taxpayer confidentiality and manages that data responsibly. I guess those safeguards can exist in other organisations.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q To clarify, you accept that there are bulk data powers, but it is just a different cohort of people. Jasleen Chaggar: I am not aware of powers that are similar to eligibility verification notices that are exercised by the DWP. I am aware that they have similar powers in relation to direct deduction orders, and maybe that is the distinction that the witnesses earlier were making.