Clause 5
Fraud Bill [Lords]
12:15 pm
Mike O'Brien (Solicitor General, Law Officers' Department; North Warwickshire, Labour)
The Bill is based on the Law Commission’s thorough review, which started way back in 1998, of the deception offences in the Theft Acts. It recommended that the Theft Act definitions of gain and loss should be applied to the new offences because they are well understood in the courts and have caused no great difficulty.
Clause 5(3) fulfils the policy that gain should include keeping what one has. That means that the avoidance of payment may, in certain circumstances, amount to fraud. Section 2 of the Theft Act 1978 has a special offence of evading by deception a liability to make a payment. An example would be when a man borrows money from a neighbour and, when a payment is due, tells a false story about a family bereavement or tragedy, which persuades the neighbour to cancel the debt. That may be the example that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield asked for.