Public Sector Fraud Authority

Debate between Baroness Twycross and Lord Vaux of Harrowden

Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

This will all take place when parliamentary time allows. I am happy to make sure that the noble Lord gets a briefing from the relevant team about the progress and where it is all going. We want to make sure that we get this right, but I am happy to arrange for a briefing for the noble Lord.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, when we were debating this Act only about a year ago, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, explained with her usual clarity that the purpose of the PSFA is to drive cross-government collaboration to tackle fraud across all public authorities. In what possible parallel universe can the DWP be the best department to drive cross-government collaboration? Does the Minister perhaps have some examples of where that might have happened?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The DWP is one of the departments that routinely work to tackle fraud, so there is considerable expertise in the department. The Public Sector Fraud Authority will continue to work with all departments and public bodies across the public sector to drive counterfraud performance and accountability, deliver cross-system services and increase counterfraud capability. In our view, this will be further bolstered by its repositioning in the DWP, in that it will be able to learn from existing, mature counterfraud capability in the department to optimise its services, and vice versa.