Clause 1 - Additional powers to obtain information
Social Security Fraud Bill
10:30 am
Mrs Jacqui Lait (Beckenham, Conservative)
This is the first time that I have been a member of a Committee under your chairmanship, Mr. Maxton, and I look forward to it. I am sure that someone who loves the Isle of Arran as much as you do will be a fair Chairman.
I shall not take too long to explain the amendments. They are based on our remaining worries about the Bill, which was amended in the other place along the lines that we suggested. In principle, we have no difficulty with the Government's requirement for information to eliminate fraud, because we are all agreed that it should be eliminated. However, certain parts of the Bill put too much pressure on people in both the public and the private sector. The amendments deal primarily with employees or employers who may feel pressurised by the requirements for information.
Baroness Hollis said in the other place:
Servants and agents can be the subcontractors of organisations. If a subcontractor held the information we needed, it would make sense to go to him as the servant or agent of the primary body rather than to the primary body itself. Servants are also the employees of a company. Putting it crudely, servants can be agents but also employees whereas an agent is a person authorised to act on behalf of another. —[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 February 2001; Vol. 621, c. 853.]
In the other place, Lord Higgins observed that the problem under discussion initially arose in relation to the Electronic Communications Act 2000, which was seen to place an unfair burden on employees to disclose information that they might not possess. That is still our fundamental problem with the Bill.
Lord Higgins also stated that he understood that the first version of the Electronic Communications Bill was sent back to the draftsmen because major objections had been made concerning the onus that it placed on employees to disclose information, as people employed at junior levels might have only partial access to such information. I seek the Minister's reassurance that that point has been adequately addressed.
Hon. Members will have dealt with housing benefit issues in their constituency surgeries. In Bromley, housing benefit administration is subcontracted to Capita, and that company would be categorised by the Bill as a servant or agent, as would its employees. However, Capita would have access merely to partial information so if employees of such a company are pressurised, they might resist helping the Government with regard to fraud matters. That must not be allowed to happen, but I understand that the Bill proposes a deadline of about 10 days for the receipt of information, and that employees will be liable to prosecution even if they have access only to partial information, as will employers such as Capita. Baroness Hollis did not address that matter in the other place, so I want the Minister to reassure me that my concerns are merely spectres.