David Pinto-Duschinsky MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Chancellor of the Exchequer on securing the Mansion House accord, which will channel billions into the economy and make a real difference to my constituents. One of the reasons that pension funds agreed to join the accord was because of the strong pipeline of investable projects that the Government are creating. Does the Minister agree that the Government’s infrastructure plans and planning reforms, opposed by the Conservatives, will unlock growth?

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend and Treasury colleagues on helping to deliver such an important agreement. The accord will unlock up to £25 billion of additional capital. It is a huge vote of confidence in the Government’s demand-side reform agenda to get Britain building and in our economic strategy, providing stability. What steps will the Government take to help make sure that investment is ramped up as quickly as possible, and to ensure that regulators help encourage investment of pension funds directly in real economic assets, for instance by looking at changes to the matching adjustment?

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  A strong social security system is not just the cornerstone of a welfare state, but a hallmark of a decent society. However, it is exactly because the system is so essential that we must safeguard its future. It is our duty not just to help the most vulnerable today, but to ensure that the system is sustainable so that it can offer support tomorrow. That is the central challenge when we consider PIP. The number receiving it has more than doubled in the five years since the pandemic, and more than 1,000 new people join it every single day. Although health conditions have become more widespread in the years following covid, due mainly to the Conservatives’ terrible mismanagement of and under-investment in the NHS, the number of people on health-related benefits such as PIP has, on some metrics, increased at twice the rate that underlying health conditions have. Those of us who believe in the welfare state cannot simply ignore this issue, and neither can we posit speculative new revenue sources to wish the problem away. Some of my hon. Friends have mentioned a wealth tax as a possible solution. I say to them gently: if only it were that easy. Dr Allin-Khan, “no country in the world has ever successfully had a wealth tax”. Those are not my words, but those of Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. If we are to protect the system, we must not seek to freeze it in aspic or ignore the problems it faces. Instead, we must confront the problems head on and seek reforms that will allow the institutions of the welfare state and the values they encode to endure.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill · Hansard source

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  I have limited time, so I will make progress. The powers the Bill provides are proportionate, measured and ringed with safeguards. It is a mark of this that, as we heard from the Secretary of State on Second Reading, the Information Commissioner has stated that the Bill as currently drafted has addressed their previously stated concerns. As well as being proportionate, the powers are necessary to fight the ever-more sophisticated frauds that we are facing. Over the past decade, financial institutions have extensively overhauled their use of technology and data and their approaches to the evolving fraud threat, yet the Government have not. It is illuminating, but perhaps not surprising, that while social security fraud has risen dramatically post covid, fraud volumes and losses in the financial services sector, including credit card fraud, have fallen according to UK Finance. The public sector has paid a steep price for not modernising its anti-fraud approach and failing to adopt industry best practices. It is a gap that this Bill seeks to address. Most of all, the measures in the Bill are crucial for protecting the vulnerable and safeguarding the legitimacy of the system itself. Our social security system rests on public consent and a belief that money is fairly spent. Fraud and error chips away at this social contract, and it takes money from those who need it most. The public in Hendon and across the country expect us to take action. There is nothing progressive whatsoever about permitting fraud. The only people who benefit are the criminals who exploit our system and those who wish to undermine its role as a cornerstone of a civilised and fair society. For the sake of the most vulnerable, the taxpayer, fairness and the system itself, I hope the House will join me in supporting the Bill and voting down those amendments.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak against amendments 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9, and new clauses 12 and 15. Fraud in the benefit system affects us all. It costs us as a country almost £1 million an hour. It takes money from the most vulnerable in society and undermines the legitimacy of and public support for our social security system. However, many of the amendments proposed simply do not recognise the vital need for this legislation. Some, such as amendments 2 and 9, would hamstring the Bill by preventing us gathering key information. Others, such as amendments 8, 5 and 6, would limit the effectiveness of the Bill and make its powers more difficult to use. Others, such as amendments 4 and new clauses 12 and 15, would seek to delay its effects. These amendments, however differently proposed, all suffer from the same pathology: they fail to take fraud seriously. We have heard a number of speeches today from opponents of the Bill, but we are yet to hear from them any serious practical suggestions about how we might tackle fraud. These opponents say that they are concerned to protect the vulnerable, but I say gently that they can offer no proposals on how to prevent the fraud that is stealing from the neediest in our society. Many Members are coming from a genuine place of concern about how to strike the right balance between protecting the public purse on the one hand and the privacy and rights of claimants on the other. I think the Bill gets the balance right. The powers it provides are proportionate.

• 27 Mar 2025 · PIP Changes: Impact on Carer’s Allowance · Hansard source

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  Does my right hon. Friend agree that in order to safeguard the future of the welfare system, we must ensure that it is sustainable?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Terms and Conditions of Employment · Hansard source

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  I start by declaring an interest as a proud member of the GMB and Unison unions. This is a debate about four numbers: 3 million, £1,400, £2,500 and 10 million. Three million is the number of people who will benefit from the fantastic measures being announced today; £1,400 is how much they will benefit—a real life-changing amount—while £2,500 is how much someone aged 18 to 20 years old will benefit from these changes and 10 million is the number of people whose lives will see a transformative impact from our Employment Rights Bill. All of that is being achieved by a Labour Government, with our plan for change delivering security for working people, but so much of it is opposed by the Conservatives. On a day when we are debating giving a pay rise to 3 million people, it is striking and speaks volumes that the Opposition Benches are completely empty. That is the difference between the Government and the Conservatives. That pay rise is the difference that a Labour Government make. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin) just tried slightly to rewrite history, but I am old enough to remember the pre-minimum wage era and who brought it to an end: a Labour Government. The introduction of the national minimum wage was a radical and transformative step, and it was opposed every step of the way by the Conservatives. When Labour included a policy for a minimum wage in our 1992 manifesto, Michael Howard claimed that it would destroy up to 2 million jobs. When we brought it to this place as legislation in 1998, the Conservatives fought it tooth and nail every single step of the way. The Conservatives’ concerns turned out to be totally unfounded. It was a pointless opposition to measures that increased the wages of more than a million workers immediately in the UK, as the evidence from my hon. Friend the Member for Earley and Woodley (Yuan Yang) pointed out. Indeed, the shadow Chancellor at the time, now better known for his railway journeys, eventually ended Tory opposition to the minimum wage, saying: “The minimum wage has caused less damage to employment than we feared.” How different the picture looks today. We have a Leader of the Opposition who recently said that the minimum wage was “overburdening” business and that maternity pay was “excessive”. In an article for ConservativeHome, the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said that our measures to boost employment rights and make work pay would have a negative effect on business, “especially in lower-wage sectors like hospitality and retail”. Perhaps the shadow Chancellor does not realise that the entire point of these measures is to bring these workers—in particular, young workers—out of low pay, to improve retention, to keep people in work and to boost our economy. The low-wage, low-growth economy that the Conservatives presided over for 14 years brought with it stagnation and a growing number of people who either left employment or never entered it in the first place. Given that, we all know where we stand. I will wrap up by saying that this measure represents a choice. Our choice is to increase the minimum wage and put money back in the pockets of working people. It is a choice to put people first. It will help thousands of people in Hendon and millions of people across this country, and it is a choice I am proud to support.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  Given that the right hon. Member’s belief is so strong, will she enlighten me on whether she voted to strip child benefit from certain families, as was Conservative policy? That was a universal benefit.

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

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  We have heard lots of statistics and detailed policy questions, but I want to start by sharing two stories. The first is of Antonia Foods in Wood Green, north London. From the outside, it looked like a normal neighbourhood corner shop selling fruit, veg and groceries, but from its back room Galina Nikolova and Gyunesh Ali ran a vast fraud operation, making use of transnational networks to file hundreds of illegal UC claims. By the time they were caught, they had defrauded the DWP of over £50 million. When the police finally raided their addresses, they found cases stuffed with cash. Nikolova and Ali received prison sentences, as did many of their associates, but the reality is that most of the money they claimed had long since disappeared, likely spirited out of the country. They had successfully stolen from us all. The second story is of Yvonne, a disabled woman who was paid thousands of pounds more in benefits than she was entitled to over a number of years as a result of an innocent mistake and is now struggling to make ends meet as the DWP deducts overpayments from her current entitlement. Both those stories illustrate why we so desperately need the Bill. The extent to which fraud against the public purse spread under the last Government is breathtaking. The proportions are simply staggering. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, public sector losses amounted to £55 billion last year—as much as the defence budget, and three times what we spend on police in England and Wales. That loss costs every man, woman and child £800 a year and is the equivalent of a third of the entire national VAT take. This is not a victimless crime or some technical infringement. It robs every family in Britain, erodes our public services and takes money that could be used to help those most in need, depriving the most vulnerable of support. My constituents in Hendon and people across the country rightly expect it to be tackled. This is a crime that feeds on the most disadvantaged and weakens not only public services but the public’s faith in those services and their fairness. I say gently to those who have criticised the Bill that there is nothing progressive and nothing compassionate about allowing fraud to fester. It is a scourge that must be tackled. It is a scourge that grew out of control and was professionalised under the last Government. Perhaps no area illustrates the challenge that we face, how it evolved and the last Government’s catastrophic failure to kerb fraud better than benefits. The DWP’s net bill for fraud and error, even after deducting underpayments, is £8.6 billion. That is £272 a second, £16,300 a minute and almost £1 million an hour. In the time that it will take for us to have the debate, the DWP will have lost more than £3 million. The bill for fraud and error is roughly the same as the Department’s entire programme budget. The DWP loses as much to fraud and error as it spends on every active programme it has to help the unemployed, the long term-sick, those with disabilities and the elderly. The picture is shocking, and it got much worse under the Conservative party. The headline figures for fraud and error excluding underpayment tripled in cash terms between 2010 and 2024 from £3.3 billion to £9.7 billion. As bad as those figures are, they actually understate how badly things deteriorated under the Conservatives. Claimant error rose only slightly in cash terms, while official error remained flat. In contrast, fraud rose a stunning sevenfold in cash terms and more than fourfold as a proportion of the total benefits budget. That was not some act of God; it was the result of serial failures by the Conservatives, who failed to understand that fraud was evolving and failed to modernise the DWP’s powers to allow it to keep up in the arms race with the fraudsters. They also made truly terrible policy and design choices that actively fuelled the fraud crisis. That can be seen nowhere better than in how the Conservatives set up universal credit. Because of their failures in properly establishing and policing its gateway, it became a magnet for fraud. Universal credit accounts for just 22% of benefit spending but contributes over 76% of all benefits fraud. Almost £1 in every £9 claimed through UC in the Conservatives’ last year in power was claimed fraudulently, compared with just £1 in £25 for housing benefit, £1 in £300 for PIP and just £1 in £1,000 for pensions. The reality is that the Conservatives failed to take the threat of fraud seriously and failed to understand how it was being professionalised and industrialised, as my earlier story showed. They left us all to pick up the bill. They say that they acted, but the truth is they did nothing for years. Even when they finally got their act together at the end of their term in office, it was too little, too late. Once again, we are having to step in to clear up their mess. They owe everyone in the House and everyone in the country an apology. It is striking that in all their bluster during the debate, we have not heard the only word that they should be uttering: sorry. Fraud exploded on the Conservatives’ watch because of their failings, but the pattern of fraud also tells us much about why the powers outlined in the Bill are so desperately needed. The DWP’s own statistics show that of the £7.4 billion lost to fraud last year, about £1 billion was lost to people who held too much capital to be eligible, £1.3 billion was lost to those who had failed to report their self-employment earnings, and a further £1.3 billion was lost to those who had failed to provide sufficient evidence. A further £250 million was lost to those who were abroad. Those frauds could have been caught with better data and better investigatory powers. It would have been possible for banks to spot people with too much capital to claim, or those with considerable earnings, yet today, because of the last Government’s failure to update their legislation, the DWP cannot compel information digitally. Virtually all banking is now done online, and yet while fraud is propagated through digital channels and moving at lightning speed, the DWP is still forced to rely on analogue tools. In other fields, we already integrate information and get institutions to work together to prevent fraud. Banks regularly scan patterns that indicate fraud; benefits should be no different. We need digital tools and access to digital data to fight fraud. As with tax, investigators should have the powers they need to recover funds from those who are no longer on benefits. That is why the powers that the Secretary of State is proposing to take are so important as they will allow us to better identify those committing fraud and take more effective recovery action to get taxpayers’ money back. That brings me back to my second story. Along with the measures that the Chancellor brought forward in the Budget, these measures will help us protect legitimate claimants by helping to pick up overpayments earlier. Last year, 480,000 people had deductions averaging £500 taken from their universal credit payments because of overpayments. Underpayments can be a source of huge anxiety and hardship. Preventing them and catching them earlier will help protect the most vulnerable claimants. That will be possible only because of the better data and the better processes that the Bill will help support. As we heard from the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick), some have voiced concerns about whether the powers proposed in the Bill will impinge on people’s rights. I am strongly reassured by the powerful raft of safeguards that the Secretary of State has included in the Bill. Those safeguards mean that new debt recovery powers will be focused not on those on benefits, but rather on those who are neither on benefits or PAYE, and the DWP will not have access to people’s bank accounts, contrary to what some have implied during the debate. Those safeguards will include independent oversight and options for appeal. I am pleased to hear that, on top of that, the ICO believes that the safeguards address the concerns that it had with the Conservative party’s proposals. This is a fair and balanced package, which modernises our approach and gives us the digital tools to fight a digital scourge, and the enforcement powers to take on organised crime while protecting the vulnerable. This Government and this ministerial team are modernising our system to protect public money, help the vulnerable and, critically, get Britain working. I am proud to support the Bill.