IDS slams bishops on welfare reform

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has hit out at bishops trying to block his welfare reforms, accusing them of ignoring the concerns of ordinary people.

Mr Duncan Smith said the Church of England bishops, who are threatening to derail his planned £26,000 benefit cap, should think more of low-income families who try to do "the right thing".

In an interview with The Sunday Times, he acknowledged that his plans to limit the total payments any household can receive could face defeat in the House of Lords on Monday.

He urged the bishops, who are leading the opposition in the upper chamber, to rethink their objections, insisting they were not doing the poor any favours.

"The question I'd ask these bishops is, over all these years, why have they sat back and watched people being placed in houses they cannot afford? It's not a kindness," he said.

"I would like to see their concerns about ordinary people, who are working hard, paying their tax and commuting long hours, who don't have as much money as they would otherwise because they're paying tax for all of this. Where is the bishops' concern for them?

Iain Duncan Smith urged the bishops to think more of
low-income families who are 'doing the right thing'

"I would like to see a more balanced response from the bishops.

"It's all very well for the bishops to express a political opinion, but I would love them to ask about the poor people on low incomes who are working hard, whose families share rooms, who are doing the right thing."

With Liberal Democrat peers expected to vote against the plan in the Lords, Mr Duncan Smith acknowledged the result could come down to the independent "crossbenchers", including the bishops.

Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown said later that he favoured a benefit cap but said the welfare revamp was currently "completely unacceptable

©Press Association

Immigrants 'wrongly paid benefits'

Benefits are wrongly being paid to more than 5,000 immigrants with no right to claim state help, research carried out by the Government suggests.

They are among some 371,000 arrivals to this country on welfare identified by an exercise to match benefit, border control and tax records for the first time.

Records are not kept of the nationality of benefit claimants in what ministers described as a "scandalous omission" by the previous Labour administration.

The Government plans to begin doing so when Universal Credit is introduced from 2013.

The data-matching project found 371,000 working-age benefit claimants were non-UK nationals when they first applied for a National Insurance number, 258,000 of them from outside the European Economic Area.

So far, detailed work has been done only on a sample of 9,000 of the latter group - three quarters of whose records were able to be matched. It found 54% were now British citizens and most others had an immigration status that allowed welfare claims.

Chris Grayling said he was shocked to find the current system
does not record the nationality of benefit claimants

But two in every 100 appeared to have "no lawful immigration status", the work by the Department for Work and Pensions, UK Border Agency and HM Revenue and Customs found. Around 125 cases are now under investigation.

Employment minister Chris Grayling said: "We will root out those claimants who can not prove their immigration status and in turn they will be stripped of their benefits. I was shocked to discover that the current system does not record the nationality of benefit claimants and we are urgently taking steps to make sure we know exactly how many non-UK nationals are claiming UK benefits."

Immigration minister Damian Green said: "These findings uncover a worrying issue we have inherited, which is why we've ordered urgent work to pursue claimants suspected of abuse and to withdraw their benefits if they cannot prove they are entitled to claim."

Those found to be abusing the system will also have their details sent to other agencies including local councils to ensure other benefits were also stopped, the Treasury said.

©Press Association 2012