Andrew Western

The hon. Lady will forgive me if I have not understood her correctly, but there is specific provision in the Bill on the debt recovery powers to limit the amount that can be clawed back to 40% of anybody’s capital, but if I have misunderstood that, I am happy to have a conversation with her afterwards. I hope that I have set out some of the steps we are taking in the Bill and more broadly to ensure support for vulnerable people. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), was right to highlight the scale of covid fraud and the lack of safeguards in place to protect the public purse. He highlighted the carer’s allowance review, which will report this summer, not next, but we are already learning the lessons of that. Much like the proposals in the Bill, data is key, so we have secured funding to extend the verify earnings and pensions service system of alerts from HMRC to 100% of claims. We will ensure in this Bill that the eligibility verification measure information is processed quickly to reduce large overpayments, and to avoid a repeat of what happened on the last Government’s watch with carer’s allowance. The hon. Member for Torbay raised the use of AI, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth. There will always be a human decision maker on each of these powers, so where decisions are made, a human—not AI—will make that call. For EVM, a flag would be passed to a human to establish benefit eligibility. For debt recovery, it would be passed to a human to assess vulnerability and the ability to pay. For information gathering, it would be passed to a human for investigation where there is a suspicion of fraud. For search and seizure, a warrant would be granted by a judge. At all times, a human is making those decisions, as is right and proper, given the powers that we are talking about. According to the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire, there is no doubt that had the Conservatives had longer, their policies would have driven fraud down further and faster than our proposals will. Thankfully, we do not have the opportunity to test that theory. Given their appalling record—with fraud and error escalating every year since the pandemic and standing at £9.7 billion last year—I dread to think what they would have done when they turned their attention to these matters. The hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire went on to ask whether the independent person would report on the use of powers. Yes, and those reports—on both the PSFA side and the DWP side—will be placed before Parliament annually. He asked about non-drivers and the point of suspending licences when not everybody drives. Well, short of taking the power to prevent somebody from walking, I fail to see how much further we could have gone in that regard. However, I recognise—as I hope he does—that that is only one of a suite of measures that we are considering to move us forward in the powers available to us. Of course, it is important to recognise that the introduction of an independent person was not considered necessary by the Conservative Government in the third-party data measures that they proposed under their Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. We are introducing that measure not just for the PSFA powers or the eligibility verification measures, but for information-gathering powers and powers of search and seizure. I understand that the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry) is concerned, but I fundamentally disagree with the idea that it is conservative to want to tackle benefit fraud, and that we should ignore the £7.4 billion-worth of welfare fraud last year. I certainly do not think that it is conservative to go after public sector fraud; in fact, if it were slightly more conservative, we might not be in the terrible position we are in now. My hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) raised a number of important questions. Time prevents me from running through them all now, but I would be delighted to meet him to discuss them further. I was especially concerned by the case that he raised. One potential benefit of the eligibility verification measure is that it will allow us to detect overpayments earlier, but clearly we want to ensure that the DWP is handling such issues correctly first time. The ICO was mentioned by a number of Members, including my hon. Friend. Just to clear that up, it was not a letter received into the Department; the ICO published on its website today its findings and thoughts on the Bill at this stage. It recognises the steps that we have taken on proportionality, and I welcome those comments. The hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) has concerns about banks and the potential erosion of data protection powers—that is not my view. The Bill will involve very limited data sharing. The Department for Work and Pensions is not monitoring accounts, and we will fine banks if they overshare in that space. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) made an important contribution. To clarify, the Bill is not predicated on saving £10 billion in welfare fraud; it sets out to save £1.5 billion over five years, but it is part of overall measures to save £8.6 billion over that period, because we do not accept the level of fraud in the system at present. The hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) suggested that the Bill subjects millions of people to unwarranted financial surveillance. To give Members absolute clarity, we will not receive transactional information from banks, we will not look in bank accounts directly, and we will not ask banks to take decisions on whether somebody has committed fraud. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) raised the question of clause 50 on the PSFA side of the Bill and asked what constitutes fraud. For clarity, it is standard for powers to be taken by the Secretary of State—or a Minister in this case—but in practice, qualified and experienced decision makers will consider cases as authorised officers. The hon. and learned Gentleman went on to raise clause 91 and the removal of driving licences. I would gently say to him that this is an existing power held by the Child Maintenance Service. The question of liable persons and whether removal is proportionate would be a matter for a judge; it would only happen after repeated attempts to secure repayment, and before any disqualification occurs, an individual will always be given the opportunity to agree a repayment plan. This is a power of last resort, but I assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that if he has specific concerns about the pursuit of fraud in Northern Ireland, I am happy to follow them up. As always, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke from the heart about the plight of his constituents and the challenges they face. I want to assure him that this is not a Bill that is intended to focus on the low-hanging fruit of vulnerable people; that is why it includes some of the protections I set out earlier, and it is why we are putting in place independent oversight for the debt recovery and eligibility verification measures. He asked about the right of appeal, and I can confirm that the rights of review and of appeal against a ruling in the debt recovery space are written into the Bill. The important question of appointees is one that I want to address directly, given the point that the hon. Gentleman raised about his constituent’s sister. To be very clear, that is something we had significant concerns about after the previous introduction of the third-party data measure, and the system will remove appointees. There may be circumstances in which those bank accounts need to be checked if the appointee receives benefits themselves, but if they do not, they will be screened out.