New Clause 17
Welfare Reform Bill
4:15 pm
Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
I entirely agree. My wife used to be an adult literacy practitioner, and my hon. Friend accurately reports the experience of many people in that position.
I ask the Minister of State to reflect on one further point. I do not know the answer; I raise it in a spirit of inquiry. We had a little fun yesterday about the error taskforce. The error taskforce has an important job to carry out, and I would like it to do so properly and be resourced to do so. I am not entirely clear whether its remit extends directly or indirectly to local authorities’ performance in overpayments of housing benefit. Administration of housing benefit is a function derived from statute but devolved by the Secretary of State to them as local housing authorities. It would make a lot of sense, given that it is for all practical purposes a social security benefit, if the error taskforce were able to investigate local authorities to see, for example, whether there are significant differences in performance between the 408 local authorities, as I suspect there are, or between the local authorities system and what one might call the central benefits system.
We in this Committee have a common interest in trying to get the regime right, minimising errors at source and being fair to citizens if an error occurs. Trying to tease out the right balance in doing so is the spirit of the hon. Gentleman’s new clause, and I hope that the Minister will reply accordingly.