Member

While we welcome this order, we have a few questions that we would like to put to the Minister. The Government’s argument for introducing this change is that the benefits of recovering £4.6 million in fraud and error every two years will outweigh any additional burdens placed on other public bodies. Can the Minister confirm how the Government will monitor and report the amounts recovered by the data sharing enabled by this change? Can she confirm how the £4.6 million prediction will be monitored to ensure that it is ambitious enough? I also note that there will now be a £300 increase in the fee payable by local authorities to the NFI for its data-matching service. Can the Minister say what assessment the Government have made of the impact of these additional fees on council finances? What discussions have she or the Government had with local authority leaders on the additional administrative burdens that will arise from the new requirement on local authorities to extract adult social care data from their systems to provide to the NFI to use in its data-matching exercises. This was part of our consultation in 2023, but it would be helpful to understand what the ongoing engagement has been.