Part of Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:15 pm on 11 March 2025.
John Milne
Liberal Democrat, Horsham
2:15,
11 March 2025
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Jeremy. I am again raising concerns about a serious power to make direct deductions from people’s bank accounts.
Life does not always come in neat paragraphs; it is messy. I have had a number of letters from constituents in Horsham setting out the kind of errors that can happen. A lady called Marianne, who is a universal credit recipient, received a small inheritance, which she tried to report by phone and email, but that still resulted in her wrongly losing her UC for a period. Another constituent, Hannah, said:
“I have zero hours contract and work between 9-11 hours a week at just over minimum wage. At times I have had a back dated pay rise which pushed me over the allowance limit (I wasn’t informed in advance this was happening). I’m also at the mercy of someone else submitting my hours, so if they aren’t submitted on time they roll over to the next pay period causing me to exceed the allowance limit.”
At no time did she ever come anywhere near the allowance limit in real earnings; nevertheless, she was caught up in the rules.
Does the Minister feel that we have sufficient safeguards to avoid that kind of inadvertent administrative error? Mistakes have happened in the past and will continue to happen, but this is a very strong power that could cause real distress.
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