Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)

My Lords, I realise that we are approaching the end of Report and the hour is late, but I do want to spend a little time speaking to my Amendment 110. Those who were present in Grand Committee will recall the examples I cited of individuals producing and disseminating videos designed to help people cheat the checks put in place by the DWP to ensure that welfare support goes only to those with genuine entitlement. These were not isolated incidents. We are talking about content with titles such as: “Unlock The Secret Steps For WINNING Your PIP Claims—Step By Step Guide”, hosted on channels with names such as “Mike Bolton Benefits Training”. This is what has come to be known as the phenomenon of the “sickfluencer”, and it represents a serious and growing threat to the integrity of the welfare system—a threat which, I regret to say, the Government are, we believe, struggling to keep pace with. For those to whom this term is unfamiliar, let me briefly explain. Sickfluencers are individuals who use Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and other social media platforms to publish detailed guides on how eligibility checks for welfare benefits can be manipulated or bypassed. They provide ready-made scripts to their viewers, instructing them on how to answer questions, what to disclose, how to pretend to have a disability or injury, and when to tell the truth and when they should lie. In short, they are professionals in coaching claimants to circumvent established eligibility safeguards. Indeed, the testimonies published on their websites and channels make it clear that many successful claimants attribute their outcomes directly to the advice of these sickfluencers. This is not simply a nuisance on the fringes of the system; it is an organised, deliberate effort to undermine the very principles of fairness and integrity on which the welfare system depends. Since I last spoke on this issue, in Committee, thousands upon thousands more people have viewed this content. Hundreds more will have used it in their eligibility interviews, and possibly dozens will have been successful in their claim, precisely because of these videos and not because of a genuine entitlement. I want to be clear that I understand that noble Lords on these Benches understand, and that the Conservative Party makes a point of understanding, that there are people in our country who should receive support from the state. There are people who cannot live without the support provided to them through the welfare system and it is absolutely right that we help those people. What can never be right is the abuse of this system of support by people who do not have a genuine eligibility, but who are coached to cheat the system and steal from the limited resources which should rightly be going to those who need them most. If we have confidence in the system of testing as it currently stands, we should also be confident that it, and the assessors themselves, have the ability and the capacity to determine who is in need of support and those people who are not. This is the context in which we bring forward this amendment, which is designed to deal with this growing problem directly and proportionately. The amendment has been carefully drafted to ensure that we target those who are encouraging, facilitating and enabling fraud, an objective which I am sure noble Lords across the House will support. Proposed new subsection (1) makes it absolutely clear that the offence applies only where a person intentionally publishes or communicates information that is reasonably likely to be used to mislead or deceive public authorities in order to secure welfare to which they are not entitled. This goes right to the heart of the problem I have described: the deliberate creation and dissemination of coaching materials designed to cheat the system. Proposed new subsection (2) adds the essential safeguard that culpability arises only where the individual knows or ought reasonably to know that the content is intended to facilitate dishonest conduct under existing legislation, such as the Social Security Administration Act 1992 or the Welfare Reform Act 2012. This ensures that we are not targeting ordinary members of the public, but only those who are actively propagating content to enable fraud. Proposed new subsection (3) then builds in crucial protections for legitimate activity. Journalists, academics and others who are acting in the public interest or who take reasonable steps to prevent their information being misused have a statutory defence. That means that this amendment does not criminalise responsible commentary or research; it criminalises those who deliberately and knowingly produce guides to cheating welfare assessments. Proposed new subsection (4) sets out proportionate penalties: up to 12 months on summary conviction and up to five years on indictment. These sanctions are in line with other serious fraud-related offences, reflecting the harm done when organised online actors undermine the integrity of the welfare system. Finally, proposed new subsection (5) makes clear that this applies across the spectrum of modern media: written, audio, video and digital content, including social media platforms. This allows the provision to keep pace with the reality of how this fraudulent material is produced and shared, and therefore safeguards its operational effectiveness into the future. Therefore, we believe that this amendment is tightly drafted, carefully targeted and proportionately safeguarded, and would ensure that those who maliciously spread instructions on how to cheat the welfare system can be prosecuted. In short, it would criminalise not the sharing of information but the facilitation of fraud. Fraud today is not static; it evolves, it adapts and it exploits new platforms with increasing sophistication. If this Bill is to succeed, it must be capable of not only addressing fraud as we see it today but of anticipating and countering the methods of tomorrow. This amendment would ensure that we do precisely that, tackling a wider breadth of fraudulent activity both in the temporal sense and in the online sphere. We believe it is an essential provision if we are to make this legislation truly effective and enduring. There is a good reason for bringing this up again on Report. As the Minister knows, we seek a much greater effort in action from the Government to take down these abhorrent websites. We seek a series of proactive steps, with a timetable, to neutralise the individuals involved, who are no less than fraudsters. What are the government doing about sickfluencers? If the Minister replies that it is not for this Bill, then where and when? I am concerned about the fact that the Government are not doing the proper groundwork required to tackle the threat, which is also to understand its scale. Is the Minister aware of work under way in the department to understand the relationship between sickfluencers and the rate of those claiming benefits such as PIP? What is the causal relationship that the department understands there to be between these two matters? In other words, how are the Government assessing the scale of the threat, with a view to crafting a response to match it? Academics at Oxford University and Bournemouth University, and journalists from an ever-increasing range of publications, are highlighting this, and have done so since I raised the issue in Committee. We are not alone in imploring the Government to take action on this front. To conclude, I will be listening carefully and with interest to the response from the Minister. I am not expecting her to repeat that the current legislation is sufficient. I think she knows from discussions outside the Chamber that what I am really looking for is some real meat behind her remarks to show that the Government are taking this seriously as an abhorrent operation.