Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Finn

Report stage
Wednesday 15th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment, tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie, seeks to insert a new subsection in Clause 7 requiring the Minister to publish, within six months of Royal Assent, statutory guidance setting out the process by which authorised investigators are appointed under this part of the Bill.

Clause 7, as it stands, is one of the most powerful provisions in the Bill. It confers on authorised investigators a suite of powers drawn from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—powers that are usually reserved for police officers. These include the ability to apply for search warrants, seize property and access computerised information. These are not trivial powers; they allow the state to enter homes and businesses, seize personal possessions and compel the disclosure of data. Yet, as currently drafted, Clause 7 defines an authorised investigator as

“an individual who is authorised by the Minister to exercise the powers conferred by this section”.

It is, in effect, circular: an authorised person is whoever the Minister authorises. There is no clarity, no set of criteria and no publicly available process to explain how these individuals are selected, trained or held accountable.

If we are to grant powers of this magnitude—powers that mirror those of the police—Parliament and the public are entitled to know who will wield them and on what basis. The police are subject to detailed recruitment standards, codes of ethics and training requirements, all of which are set out in published documents such as the National Recruitment Standards-Eligibility Criteria for Police Recruitment and Consistent Recruitment Practices. Those standards exist for a reason: because with greater power comes greater responsibility. We should expect nothing less from the Public Sector Fraud Authority or from any civil servants who are to exercise PACE powers on behalf of the Minister. The public will rightly expect the same degree of rigour, impartiality and transparency that they would from a police officer acting under similar authority.

The amendment therefore asks for something very modest: a requirement that the process by which such authorisations are made be set out in guidance published within six months of this provision coming into force. That guidance would need to explain who is eligible, how individuals are assessed, what qualifications or training they require and what oversight mechanisms apply. In doing so, we would provide reassurance to Parliament and the public that these powers will not be exercised lightly and that those who wield them will be suitably qualified, appropriately vetted and properly accountable. We are, after all, creating a precedent here. These powers will not exist in isolation; they could endure for decades, exercised by future officials in future departments. It is therefore essential that we get the governance right at the outset and that we put clear expectations on the record and, ideally, in the Bill.

This is an area where guidance can make a real difference. It would strengthen the operational credibility of the new regime, improve transparency and protect the reputation of the PSFA. It would also provide Ministers with a clear framework to defend and justify their appointments in future. I hope, therefore, that the Government will look carefully at this proposal and, if they cannot accept it today, that they will bring back their own amendment at Third Reading to ensure that the appointment and oversight of authorised investigators meet the same professional standards and ethical safeguards that we rightly demand of our police. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, after Committee this was one area of the Bill that I literally had nightmares about. I think a really dangerous precedent is being set here. I am rather disappointed that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, will not divide the House on this, because this is one area where inadvertently handing over police powers to civil servants could completely backfire and cause real, serious problems.

I was talking recently to a group of people about some of the problems within the police force. Even though we have vetting and training, there are serious and well-documented problems of corruption, in some instances, or misbehaviour—I hardly need rehearse them. These police officers are charged with enormous privilege to act on behalf of the state. Therefore, we know that even when we have such safeguards in place, people with power can abuse that power.

In this instance, this Bill, however well meaning, intends to give similar powers to people when we have no idea what their training will be, whether they will be vetted and what qualifications there will be. Therefore, this amendment is entirely appropriate. It is rather modest, but it does at least seek to provide some safeguards for what is happening here, which is that the state is setting up a civilian population to act as police officers. To be honest, the public do not know about it. It is shocking. Whenever I have told anyone that this came out in Committee and that it is contained in the Bill, it is the thing that has shocked people the most. I hope not just that we can receive reassurances but that concrete responses are brought forward by the Minister as to what can be done to ensure that this does not go very badly wrong and backfire.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment, tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie, seeks to insert a new clause establishing clear fraud risk management duties for all public authorities that oversee major spending programmes—that is, those involving annual disbursements exceeding £100 million. The purpose of this amendment is straightforward but fundamental. It is to ensure that the Public Sector Fraud Authority does not become, as it very easily could, an external body to which departments can simply outsource responsibility for managing fraud risk, rather than taking ownership of it themselves.

We have heard a great deal, rightly, about the scale of public sector fraud and the cost to the taxpayer, but as we look to the future, the real question is not simply how the PSFA will investigate or recover those losses; it is how we build a culture of counterfraud across the public sector—one in which every department, agency and accounting officer takes personal and institutional responsibility for preventing fraud at source.

This amendment aims to do exactly that. It would require all public authorities responsible for large spending schemes—those worth more than £100 million a year—to register those schemes with the PSFA, conduct fraud risk assessments and prepare annual fraud measurement plans. Those plans would have to use robust, statistically valid methods to estimate fraud and error rates, such as representative sampling or equivalent techniques. The PSFA would then independently verify those reported figures, publish an annual report comparing departmental self-assessments with its own verified data and assign each authority a red, amber or green rating to reflect the adequacy of its fraud management arrangements. Those ratings and the underlying data would then be published, both in each department’s annual accounts and in the PSFA’s report to Parliament.

Finally, where there are significant discrepancies or failings, the PSFA would have the power to require the relevant authorities to submit an action plan within 30 days setting out how they will correct the deficiencies. Compliance with these duties would then be subject to audit by the Comptroller and Auditor-General, bringing this entire framework within the scrutiny of Parliament.

This is a serious proposal that goes to the heart of what we have been saying throughout the passage of the Bill. Fraud is not a problem that can be solved by a single agency, however capable. It must be the business of the entire public sector. We cannot allow a situation to develop where departments and public bodies come to see the PSFA as an external safety net—somewhere they can pass the buck to when something goes wrong. If we are not careful, that is precisely what will happen. Officials will say that fraud is the PSFA’s job, Ministers will reassure Parliament that the PSFA is on the case and, in the meantime, the very culture of accountability that we are trying to build will start to erode.

This amendment reverses that logic. It would make counterfraud a statutory discipline—something that must be embedded, measured and reported on within each department and public authority. It would give the Minister for the Cabinet Office the information and oversight that they need to see at a glance where problems lie across government, and it would allow Parliament, through the Comptroller and Auditor-General, to see how public money is being protected and where it is being put at risk. In short, it would ensure that no official, no Permanent Secretary and no department can hide behind the PSFA. It would place responsibility exactly where it belongs—on those who spend and manage public money.

This approach also has a longer-term benefit. If departments develop and strengthen their own internal counterfraud capability, the need for PSFA intervention should gradually decline. That is what success should look like: not a PSFA burdened with firefighting every scandal across government but a public sector that has learned, embedded and internalised the discipline of fraud prevention. That is the culture shift we need. It is how we stop treating counterfraud as an emergency response and start treating it as an essential part of good public administration.

This amendment would give practical effect to that ambition. It would give the PSFA oversight, the Minister visibility and Parliament the means to scrutinise what is and is not being done across the system. If the Government are serious about tackling fraud at scale, then this is how they can demonstrate it: not by concentrating power in one central authority but by building a resilient, accountable and transparent network of fraud management across the public sector.

The amendment would strengthen not just the Bill but government itself. It would embed responsibility where it belongs and ensure that accountability, transparency and culture change go hand in hand. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, one reason why I support the intention of the Bill is that I have become concerned that major fraud with public money has gone unchallenged for too long. One of my worries about the Bill is when it goes after low-hanging fruit—that is much more in relation to people on benefits, which we will discuss later on Report.

This amendment seems prepared to challenge what has become complacency about public money and waste and seeks to find a mechanism to ensure that it does not become yet another box-ticking bureaucratic exercise. While I am worried about even more bureaucracy, the intention behind the amendment is serious and rightfully puts the focus on where we should be worried: where people in public life have become utterly negligent with the taxpaying public’s money and feel that they will not be penalised. I am happy to go along with this, because I too worry that the PSFA will otherwise simply be a box-ticking exercise—somewhere where these matters will not be fully accounted for and discussed with the public. I will support the amendment should it be pushed further.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Finn

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, when considering these amendments, I thought at first about tackling the perpetrators guilty of persistent stalking and constant and continued terrorising or harassment of the victim. The kind of stories that we have just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, in the testimony about Cheryl is what came to mind. For anyone who has experienced, or known friends or family on the receiving end of, that kind of treatment—constantly living under the awful reality of fear, looking over one’s shoulder and sometimes then facing police indifference or negligence—that is what springs to mind, as it did for me when I first looked at these amendments.

Yet I have some real qualms and queries about these amendments and feel that, however emotive this topic is, we need to pause and be cool. At the very least, I think there is a need for more precision in terms of what or who we are talking about. Who, exactly, does this allow the law to target? What constitutes a serial offender? What constitutes a serious enough offence to trigger these kinds of perpetrator interventions? Are there any time limits at all on surveillance, the sharing of information or the labelling of someone as a perpetrator? I worry that we could bring our own prejudices and subjective views and assume that we all agree on who or what we are talking about.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, stated as fact that

“past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour.”

I dispute that. It flies in the face of agency and the possibility of reform, and it is not necessarily the basis on which we should develop law. We should certainly suggest that it is not always true. We heard the terrible story of Colin, whose past behaviour went on and escalated. But this Bill broadly spells out abuse to include a huge range of different types of behaviour. Do we always think they will escalate and end up as murder?

We are told that if somebody moves and starts a new relationship or moves away, they must report to the police, but that assumes that they will always be an abuser. We assume the police should have the right under Clare’s law to warn partners. But again, I want to know: does that mean we consider abuse a permanent feature in somebody’s personality? I worry about a national system of surveillance that follows around somebody dubbed a perpetrator that involves all state agencies. This amounts to state stalking of those labelled as abusers. I worry when perpetrators are accused in this Bill of hiding in plain sight, as though they are permanently committing offences, when maybe they are living in plain sight as citizens who have done the time for their crime and are not offending. Why do we always see them as perpetrators?

Of course, the most extreme examples are being given here today, and some of those terrorising examples of the most violent abusers, leading to preventable murder, are what concern me and many others here. Yet this legislation has broadened the meaning of abuse to an ever-expanding number of behaviours, as though all of them are escalating behaviours. I worry about losing a sense of perspective and justice. I worry that we end up focusing on offenders, not offences. For legislators, that is nerve-wracking. I do not think that if somebody has been abusive, they should for ever be tarred as abusive or we should see it as predetermined that they will carry on.

We will go very close, if we are not careful, to seeing certain people as malevolent, dangerous and evil. Are we saying those who have ever committed any of the multitude of abuses named in this law are a peculiar breed of criminal who, inevitably, no matter what, will strike again, and will carry on posing an ongoing threat? It is far too reminiscent of outdated views about “criminal types”, and that view of people has a long, unsavoury history.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, earlier asked us to “spot the signs”, but I am worried about us wandering around spotting signs in people. In an earlier part of this Committee, we were told that football matches and drinking might lead to domestic abuse. The “spotting the signs” version of legislative change strikes me as being too arbitrary and rather dangerous. Whenever we discuss domestic abuse, I often detect a lurking class prejudice. But the most important thing is the danger of lumping together a variety of individuals and behaviours.

I will make one point as an aside. Many noble Lords have mentioned that we all received a huge amount of information before these amendments were discussed. That is true, and in the debate so far those briefings have been used as evidence. I will make a caveated note about what constitutes evidence. When people stand up and say “But the evidence shows”, it is not quite the same as the evidence of the efficacy or safety of, for example, a vaccine against coronavirus. The evidence we are sent as legislators is often commissioned by, and presented by, lobbying organisations. Their briefing documents, much repeated in this House, might be repeated as facts or truth, but they are not always objective —or, in fact, factual. At the very least, we should recognise that they can be contentious. So, I ask for some caution that, while we want to deal with the most extreme examples, in the course even of this discussion facts and evidence have been thrown in that have been ideological than helpful.

[Baroness Finn (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we have debated at length whether our laws are sophisticated enough to catch all the terrible subtlety and invidiousness inherent in domestic abuse. It is important, though, that we also consider what can be done by way of prevention and reform. It is for this reason that I speak in support of Amendment 167 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bertin and other noble Lords.

I say, first, that not a penny should be spent on perpetrator programmes until we are sure the victim support provision is comprehensive. But where it is, we should also look at perpetrator strategies. We must do all we can to help victims, but our ultimate aim is to come as close as we can to eradicating domestic abuse from our society. Here, we are looking to reform individuals but also to weed out the idea that domestic violence is somehow a normal part of existence. Our targets are as much perpetrators as their children and extended families. It is right, then, that the Government should come forward with a perpetrator strategy, and one year should suffice to ensure it is sufficiently thought through and properly resourced.

In particular, I call attention to proposed new paragraph (a),

“improving the identification and assessment of perpetrators.”

Everything we have heard throughout the passage of this Bill has been about domestic abuse and its victims falling through the cracks—cracks in public health, cracks in early intervention, cracks in enforcement and cracks in sentencing. We need to get ahead of this crime wherever we can, and that means getting better at identifying perpetrators as well as victims to lessen damage and expedite justice and reform.

A large number of organisations, including those that support victims, have come forward to say they support this amendment and call for the Government to create a perpetrator strategy. The only caveat I would offer is that we should make sure that the strategy is thoughtful and comprehensive and that the programmes it offers are quality-assured. I read with interest the debate from the other place, where Members heard stories of providers that were not only opportunistic but unqualified bidding for contracts to provide perpetrator programmes. But if we get this right, the effects could be profound.

Other noble Lords have mentioned the Drive project, which works with high-risk, high-harm abusers—in other words, the worse and most dangerous perpetrators of domestic abuse. A University of Bristol evaluation found the Drive project reduced the number of perpetrators using physical abuse by 82%, and those displaying jealousy and controlling behaviour by 73%, and that it was similarly effective in reducing other types of abuse. In other words, if we have a strategy that supports quality-assured programmes such as these, we can prevent abuse, reform perpetrators and save lives.

My final point is a call for the Government to ensure that funding is available for such programmes consistently and universally. Local authority budgeting cycles or geographical location should never prevent such provision being available. The consequences are simply too profound for postcode lotteries. Domestic abuse is unfortunately ubiquitous and, if we are to attempt to eradicate it, our support programmes must be too.