Clause 33 - Offence of fraud
Tax Credits
10:00 am
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)
I have listened carefully to what the Minister has said, and he has deployed his powers of advocacy to the full. He has made the best fist of what I think is a bad case. In former incarnations, he will often have had the experience, entirely on instructions and quite properly, of painting a picture that bears only a thin relationship to the facts. He has done the same today. He has done it to the best of his ability, but notwithstanding his considerable ability, the position remains entirely unsatisfactory.
The Minister said that we should not simply be ratchetting up the maximum sentence and that that will do no good in itself. I have served on a number of Committees since his party has been in government, as he may have done himself, at which an entirely different view has been taken. When the Government have wanted to emphasise a particular offence and suggest that it be treated with greater seriousness, they have increased the maximum sentence. They have done that for a range of offences, where they have considered it important and proper for an offence to be taken more seriously.
We think that that applies here and that this offence should be taken more seriously than it has been in the past. In some of the Minister's wider comments, he moved away, failing to understand the wide-ranging consensus in society that people who cheat the system are cheating other people and should not be allowed to get away with it. It is on that basis that we have all the hotlines, helplines and means of uncovering fraud that different Governments have introduced. Ordinary people get so annoyed and hot under the collar when people cheat the system that they want to pass on the information and ensure that the offenders are brought to book. The tragedy is that far too few are brought to book.