Clause 2 - Electronic access to information
Social Security Fraud Bill
12:30 pm
Ms Angela Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Social Security; Wallasey, Labour)
The issues raised by the amendments are similar to those raised by the previous group, of which the lead amendment was No. 14. I shall try not to go over the same ground in dealing with the issues raised. The clause pertains to electronic access to information, which is one of the major differences.
Amendment No. 22 would limit authorised officers to obtaining only specific, rather than particular, information when making requests. I shall not follow the hon. Lady by quoting from dictionaries, as I am not sure whether doing so illustrated her point or ours. I shall deal with some of the safeguards that surround the power.
I ask the hon. Lady to remember that fraud occurs when people lie about their circumstances, the work that they do, who they are, the money that they have, where they live and who they live with. In discovering those lies, we and our authorised officers must be concerned to protect the huge social security budget from fraud and abuse. That is the aim of the Committee.
Authorised officers will obtain information to discover the truth on a case-by-case basis; there will be suspicions, tip-offs or information about a particular sort of fraud that has been, is being or is about to be perpetrated by a particular individual. In each case, authorised officers will know what information they need to obtain to check that a fraud is not taking place. However, in discussing the matter generally, we can only outline those categories and leave the decision about accessing the relevant information in the circumstances to the authorised officer. That can be done only on a case-by-case basis.
Authorised officers will not ask for anything that they do not need and can ask only for what it is reasonable to ask for. Those are the protections that are in the Bill and the principles that will guide officers when making requests in writing. We seek to apply the same principles in clause 2 when the information is made available electronically rather than in writing, as dealt with in clause 1.
When we negotiate with information providers over electronic access, we will tell them the information is needed and that which is not needed, to which we will not be seeking access. If we came by information that was irrelevant to the inquiry, it would be disposed of in accordance with the Data Protection Act. That is spelled out in more detail in paragraph 5.5 of the draft code of practice. I suspect that that is in both versions of that document—the one with the red cover and the one with the green cover. We will also ensure that records are kept of all access to electronic information using the powers of the legislation.
One should bear in mind that electronic information leaves an audit trail that can be checked by the monitoring organisations to ensure that there has not been unauthorised access. That means that management know who has accessed the information, on whose behalf and for what reason. We also ask organisations used to provide on-line access to information to keep records of all access for audit trail purposes. If it appears that authorised officers have obtained or disclosed information unlawfully, or attempted to do so, they will be investigated and dealt with. As my right hon. Friend the Minister said, that can lead to dismissal or even prosecution and jail sentences.
I do not want to deal in great detail with the other amendments, unless the hon. Lady insists, because we have had a long debate about the general principles of clause 1. I hope that she will accept the reassurances that I have given on the safeguards to the electronic access with which we are dealing.