Member

Turning to Amendment 80, it is possible to say that my noble friend Lord Davies and I probably have different objectives at this point of the Bill. This amendment seeks to reduce the DWP’s use of EVNs to only those cases where the department already had reasonable grounds to suspect that a person was committing an offence. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, pointed out, that would in effect make the power redundant. I realise that that is the point of my noble friend’s amendment. I accept that; we simply take a different view on what is necessary and proportionate to address the problem of fraud.