Meeting of the Parliament 25 June 2025
I thank the committee for its deliberations when we initially discussed the matter some weeks ago, and I thank the members who have taken part in the debate.
Several members have pointed out that the bill is about the prevention and deterrence of fraud and error, and that is a very important part of any social security system. Maggie Chapman is quite right to point out that only a very, very small minority of people abuse the social security system, and we must always appreciate and understand that context.
However, it is important that, for those who abuse, or even think about abusing, the system that we hold most dear, we take a zero-tolerance approach to fraud, as long as we ensure that, in taking that approach, the system has dignity, fairness and respect at its heart. We can do both—we can have a system with dignity, fairness and respect, but we must also ensure that we tackle fraud and error as we do so.
I appreciate the remarks that members have made about specific technical aspects of the powers under the bill. It is important to point out how those will be used—or indeed, for some of them, not used—in Scotland and I appreciate the UK Government’s continued discussions in that regard. Those discussions have been difficult and complex, given the fact that the Scottish Government did not see the full provisions before the bill was introduced. That makes it challenging for this Government and this Parliament to be able to discuss and debate the issues, in particular where they are of such a technical nature.
Collette Stevenson, the convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, pointed out that the Government will require to lodge a supplementary LCM for the bill. In response to the other points that she made, I say that we expect amendments relating to overpayment recovery to be made at the report stage in the House of Lords, but we do not have a public date for that yet. I will ensure that the committee is kept up to date with any information that we have, and I thank members for their time this evening.