Neil Duncan-Jordan

The Minister may remember that on Report, I tabled a number of amendments in the hope of safeguarding the public from seeing their bank become an arm of the state. Today, I will speak about Lords amendment 43, which deals with the scope of the eligibility verification measure. The EVM would give the DWP power to give certain financial organisations an eligibility verification notice. That notice would require the receiver to identify relevant accounts that specified benefits are paid into, assess those accounts against eligibility indicators and, where there is indication that incorrect payments have been or may be made, share specified details of those accounts with the Department. The Bill includes provision for an independent reviewer to conduct an annual review of the Secretary of State’s powers under the EVM. Lords amendment 43 seeks to expand the scope of that review to ensure that the costs to banks are proportionate, and that any unintended adverse consequences to benefit recipients are identified. At the moment, the independent review of the EVM need only consider the extent to which the Secretary of State and the financial institutions in receipt of a notice have complied with the requirements when exercising the measure, and whether the EVM has been effective in assisting in identifying incorrect benefit payments. It does not require the independent reviewer to also consider whether the EVM is being used proportionately, which is the key to Lords amendment 43. It is essential that any consideration of the proportionality of the EVM takes into account the potential harm to individuals. In Committee, several witnesses warned that the EVM could result in serious harm to benefit recipients. For example, there is the possibility of an algorithmic error when automated systems are used on a population-wide scale. If the algorithms are scanning the bank accounts of 10 million people, an error rate of just 1% will result in 100,000 cases where innocent people are wrongly investigated.