Part of Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 3:00 pm on 11 March 2025.
Andrew Western
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
3:00,
11 March 2025
On the question raised by both the Opposition spokesperson and, substantively, the hon. Member for Horsham on the amounts that banks will levy in administrative charges on customers who are subject to a deduction order, paragraph 8 of schedule 5 makes provision for banks to deduct sums from an individual’s account for the purpose of meeting reasonable costs. Paragraph 23 makes provision for the Secretary of State to make regulations to set and maintain a cap on the charges that the banks may deduct. That is in line with the approach taken by the Child Maintenance Service, which sets maximum rates that the debtor can be charged for lump-sum or regular deductions.
To give an indication of the maximum amounts, that is £55 for a lump-sum deduction and £10 that the bank may charge for each regular deduction. It is worth stating, for the benefit of Members, that banks do not necessarily charge that amount; it can be significantly lower, but that is the most that someone can expect to pay.
On banks more generally, the exact costs to banks of this are still being worked through, for obvious reasons, but they have the ability to claim back administrative costs, as we have just discussed. On engagement, I have met UK Finance and a number of banks on a number of occasions. I think that the overarching theme of those conversations is that they would not want anything too onerous placed on them, but that they welcome the thrust of what we are trying to achieve and want to be helpful in working with us to achieve that. Speaking of costs to banks is probably a natural point for me to mention the penalty that can be placed on banks for not complying, which is £500.
On the question of multiple accounts and the determination of which accounts to look into and so on, we would make multiple orders if we wanted to look at more than one bank account. We would send information notices to each of those. We can use those notices to see other accounts that are held and relevant. Were someone to have a number of accounts, they would not be able to evade this provision, as was the case perhaps when we were discussing the eligibility verification measure.
I think I have probably answered everything that I had noted. Please let me know if there is anything else. I was about to repeat myself—
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