Member

As I mentioned on Report, I am concerned about what this Bill says about our welfare state. It is in danger of creating a second-class citizenship, where welfare recipients have fewer civil liberties than the rest of us. It turns banks into an arm of the state, empowered to trawl through personal data, even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing. It strips away a fundamental principle of British justice: the presumption of innocence. That is why we need to ensure that in the annual review of the power, the independent reviewer considers the harm to individuals, so that we can understand whether the powers being exercised are proportionate. I therefore urge the Minister to address these concerns while there is still time and accept Lords amendment 43 as a basic safeguard to ensure that those who are most likely to be impacted by these powers are taken into account when we scrutinise how they have been exercised.