Member

It is worth emphasising the issues. I will emphasise again that we need to understand the nature of what is being proposed by the Government. No one supports fraud; that is not the issue. Clearly, it is wrong in the benefits system as much as it is anywhere else, but what we have here is an unacceptable level of mass intrusion into citizens’ private affairs. I will emphasise it again: the Government are taking powers to undertake mass intrusion into private affairs without due cause. My amendment would simply require that there are reasonable grounds before going into anyone’s private affairs. I would have thought that that goes without saying but, instead, what we have is intrusion looking for suspicion. The suspicion is not there. We know that fraud takes place, but we do not know who is doing it, so looking at everyone in a particular category is, by definition, suspicionless. If there is no suspicion, there is no reasonable cause.