Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 91A and 91B in my name in the group, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for her support in this. As the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, just said, these two amendments are designed to expand the scope of the independent review and the powers of the independent reviewer. I was very pleased to see the introduction of an independent review around the EVN powers; it adds an important safeguard. But as drafted, the scope of the review is quite limited, covering only whether the exercise of the powers has complied with Schedule 3B and with the code of practice, and whether it has been effective in identifying or assisting in identifying incorrect payments. It does not cover any of the other impacts that the exercise of the powers might have beyond that; we talked in the previous group about the costs, for example. We have previously discussed and raised concerns about the effects that the Bill could have on vulnerable people, so I will not repeat those again—we have had quite a lot of debates around it. However, the possibility of those impacts on vulnerable people is both real and important, so it should be considered once those powers are in force, and, frankly, the obvious place for that is the independent review. So Amendment 91A would simply add an assessment of the impact on vulnerable persons to the scope of the independent review. Amendment 91B is about the powers of the independent reviewer to obtain information. As it stands at the moment, they have no information-gathering powers. All the Bill says is that the Secretary of State “may” disclose information to the independent reviewer, and that is not good enough. For the independent review to be meaningful, the reviewer must have the legal ability to obtain all the information that he or she considers necessary to carry out the review. That is what Amendment 91 attempts to achieve: to allow the independent reviewer to request whatever they feel necessary to carry out the review, and to put a requirement for the Secretary of State to disclose what is requested. I rather hope that neither of those is particularly controversial as amendments go. Just generally, I should say that these are the last amendments that I have tabled, which may relieve the Minister, so I just wanted to say that I hope that she accepts the spirit in which all of them have been put forward. I accept that the Bill is much less concerning than its predecessor was, and I hope that she sees the amendments as generally constructive, aimed primarily at ensuring that the safeguards against misuse of these powers are both robust and, importantly, permanent. I will be very happy to meet with her between now and Report to see whether we can find common ground on some of them.