Clause 4
Fraud Bill [Lords]
12:00 pm
Mike O'Brien (Solicitor General, Law Officers' Department; North Warwickshire, Labour)
I assure the hon. Gentleman that if someone goes into an elderly person’s home and steals some money, that situation is covered elsewhere in the criminal law. Nobody is suggesting otherwise. The new provision is meant to catch other circumstances. It may cover that situation too, but one would not choose to prosecute such a theft as a fraud.
We are considering circumstances in which people may have the key to someone’s house, or their pension card or pension book, and may collect their pension, or obtain information as a result of documents that may be in the house. The situations about which those who made representations to us were concerned were those in which someone has a relationship with such a person that supports their level of independence—situations in which there is an element of trust, but that does not extend to what Lord Justice Millett described as the “single-minded loyalty” of the fiduciary. The hon. Gentleman’s argument that the provision be restricted to fiduciary relationships would leave a vulnerable group of people exposed, and I do not think he wants that. We do not, and we have had representations from others that they do not, either. It is on that basis that we put the wording in the clause,
“he is expected to safeguard”.
Such a person is in a position where they are trusted, but it might not go as far as having a legal relationship which involves an entitlement on the part of the other person to their single-minded loyalty. The person may have loyalty to many others.