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Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 16 June 2025

Debate

Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Contribution

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for their support on this. I welcome the clear statement from the noble Baroness that she agrees—which is a very good start—that the eligibility indicator in itself would not be reasonable grounds. I need to go back and carefully read what she said to understand exactly what is guidance, what is code, what is Bill, et cetera. But I am reassured by a lot of what she says. I suppose my caution still comes back to this point: my worry is not with the noble Baroness but with a Government in five or 10 years’ time of a rather different hue and with slightly less squeamishness, shall we say, about some of this stuff. Are these safeguards robust? We are giving substantial new powers to the department, therefore these safeguards need to be robust and not changeable at will by a future Government. That is what I want to dig into and understand a bit better when I go back into this. So we may come back to this, and I hope we will discuss it further between now and Report. But, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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