Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)

My Lords, this Bill is important, creating a wide range of powers for the Cabinet Office and DWP to deal with fraud and error. Until recently, it received very little attention in this House, being in Grand Committee. A small group of noble Lords have worked on it as it has gone through the stages in this House and it has been a great pleasure to work with all of them, across all parties. I want to repeat what I said before: first, that the Bill as introduced was a much better Bill than its previous incarnation under the last Government. I am extremely grateful to both Ministers for that; they listened and acted on the concerns raised at that time and reflected many of them in the Bill as it was tabled originally. The same is true of the opposition team; I think they also heard those concerns, and it has been a pleasure that they have been so supportive of many of the changes made to strengthen the safeguards around the powers. Equally, the engagement from the Ministers and their officials has been exemplary throughout the passage of the Bill. It has been a very good example of how this House works best and I am very grateful to all of them. They have been not only extremely generous with their time but very constructive in their engagement. Documents, such as the draft code of practice, have been published in good time, which I think most noble Lords would agree is not always the case. The detailed document that showed how the Bill would work alongside other legislation was a lot of work for somebody but incredibly helpful in enabling all of us to understand this better. As the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, just said, special mention is merited for whoever produced the famous flowcharts. I am also grateful to all those who supported me in my efforts to strengthen the safeguards around these new powers, in particular, the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and others. Having said that, we were not able to find agreement on everything, as we saw on Tuesday. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, that I remain keen to see whether we can find a constructive solution to those remaining issues that would work for us all. I stand ready to work with her and her team to that end before we get into ping-pong. I am not trying to thwart the intent of the Bill and have tried throughout to reflect as closely as possible what the Government say they really need. I really hope that we can find something mutually agreeable during the next stages.