Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I will not press this to a vote, so the Whips do not need to worry. Instead, I would like to make a few points. My first point is about the complexity of setting out to claimants the deduction rate. I hear what the Minister said, but it does not entirely reassure me. I believe that, as a matter of basic fairness, however complex certain calculations are, the Government should, just like commercial enterprises, be able to set them out in as simple a way as possible to the beneficiaries—the claimants. My second point is that the way we crafted the amendment—the comprehensive provision on fairness in proposed new subsection (8)(b)(ii)—was precisely designed to distinguish fraud cases from other cases. However, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester said, the vast majority of these debts are actually due to official error; that is mainly what we are dealing with. Of course, it would have been possible to exclude the recovery of debts from overpayments due to fraud from the scope of the amendment. Limitation periods are very important in any legal system because they are about both fairness and efficiency. Given the mountain of overpayments that various reports have pointed to, a system that does not have a cut-off time will continue to repeat those same mistakes. It is therefore about efficiency as much as fairness. With that in mind, I am grateful to the Minister for the reassurances she has given. They go to two critical elements: clarity of communication with affected individuals, and timeliness. I hope that she will pursue those two objectives as much as she can within the policy, because it is absolutely necessary that people are told about these deductions before they actually begin. They have to be told clearly what the deductions will be, and as soon as possible—ideally, quite a bit before the deductions begin. With those assurances in mind, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.