Member

If this amendment were to go through, and we saw that fraud and error rates were rising around a benefit not currently in scope and we knew that financial institutions held data that would help us tackle this, we would not be able to do anything about it until there was another piece of DWP primary legislation—and they are not that common. Being able to add to the list of benefits in scope is crucial because it means that the DWP can continue to respond to fraud and error in the system for whichever benefits are most affected. However, that would be done not by ministerial diktat but by the affirmative procedure and going through Parliament. We think that is proportionate and, I have to say, the DPRRC and the Constitution Committee found no concerns with this way of doing it.