Clause 1 - Additional powers to obtain information
Social Security Fraud Bill
12:00 pm
Ms Angela Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Social Security; Wallasey, Labour)
I hope that I can reassure the hon. Lady again. As my right hon. Friend the Minister said when discussing the previous group of amendments, the person investigated must be a benefit claimant who is covered by proposed new subsection (2C). That states that an authorised officer must have,
``reasonable grounds for believing that the identified person''
to whom the inquiry relates has,
``committed, is committing or intends to commit''
a benefit fraud.
The purpose of the Bill is twofold. First, we want to deter people from committing benefit fraud. We will send people the message, on leaflets and claim forms, that any information that is given in a benefit claim may be checked by a third party to ensure that the truth has been told. The message will be, ``Don't lie to us''.
The other purpose of the Bill is to make for more effective detection of fraud that has been committed. People who lie on a benefit application form, perhaps by stating that they do not have a bank account, should know that they are taking a serious risk, because the new powers will allow us to discover that they do have a bank account. We will not want further information when we have discovered the facts that are required to prove a fraud. As I said, it would be illegal for us to collect all sorts of information for the hell of it.
We require only one piece of information to confirm that a benefit claimant has given false or inadequate information that affects their benefit claim. In such circumstances, powers are limited and access to information that we have is narrowly drawn. Authorised officers will have legal obligations under other laws on the statute book, particularly the Data Protection Act, which mentions information that is superfluous to need. If we acquire such information, we do not have the right to keep it, and it must be destroyed.