Clause 11
Fraud Bill [Lords]
4:45 pm
David Heath (Shadow Leader of the House of Commons & Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, Cabinet Office; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
The amendments are quite separate, and I shall deal with them in turn.
Amendment No. 12 might sound like a very small distinction, but actually it has greater import than would first appear. First, stylistically, it brings the text of the clause in line with the clause title: “Obtaining services dishonestly”. That seems appropriate.
Secondly, however, there is a difference between a dishonest act and a person who performs an act dishonestly. A dishonest act is, or could be, interpreted to be so at a later date, and the perpetrator may not be party to that interpretation. In other words, he may not have been behaving dishonestly but may have committed an act that, on consideration, is seen as dishonest. That puts the act at one remove from the intent.
The distinction is very narrow: in most cases, a person who commits a dishonest act will know perfectly well that they are doing so and will have been acting dishonestly. However, on a limited number of occasions, an act that could be interpreted as dishonest is committed by a person who believes that he is acting honestly. Using the adverb rather than the adjective would remove any possibility of ambiguity or legal argument on that nice distinction. There could be no distinction: if the person was obtaining services dishonestly, he would be doing so by a dishonest act, but would also know that he was doing so by a dishonest act because he was acting dishonestly.