Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I too rise very briefly. A number of us have raised this scandal throughout Committee and the Minister has rightly said, “Well, there’s an independent review, I really can’t comment until we get the findings”. I say, “If we can’t comment until we get the findings of the independent review, the Government shouldn’t be taking money from the carers. That would seem obvious to me. Let’s wait until we’ve got the findings of the independent review”.

However, this speaks to the moral dilemma that was very well articulated by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. It is something that has been troubling many of us throughout Committee: the Bill fails to distinguish between the ways people are treated for error and for fraud. Through no fault of their own, they end up in some instances being criminalised and certainly subject to some quite severe powers. That has always felt morally unjustifiable.

Another point this raises is that, although we constantly say that the moral case for this is that the money must be reclaimed, many instances of error seem to be due to errors made by the DWP, yet there is never any clarity about how, morally, it might be asked to pay. I am not suggesting that it pays financially, but if we are saying that those who make an error must pay, I do not understand why the DWP has not, as part of the Bill, made it clear which errors made by the department or state bodies the public will be able to hold them to account for when they are made. The scandal of the carers has cut through with the public: people know about it and are discussing it, and they in no way think that these people are welfare scroungers, frauds or doing anything wrong. So I urge the Government in this instance to be very clear that they will not act, as this amendment rightly argues, at least until the inquiry has brought its conclusions into the public arena.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, I hope to be even more brief. I have sympathy for this amendment, but it is backward-looking, as it relates to situations that have already happened. We also need to stop them happening in the future. These problems have arisen because of a very badly designed benefit. It has a cliff-edge threshold. Cliff-edge thresholds will always be the ones that cause problems, so I really hope that we learn the lessons from this situation and stop applying cliff-edge thresholds to benefits. It does not work and is almost guaranteed to create problems of this nature.

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We believe, as I said at the beginning, that this is a very serious matter, and I urge the Minister accept the amendment, or to work with colleagues to bring forward a similar provision at a later date, perhaps on Report. We have a duty not only to recover fraudulently claimed funds but to stop that fraud happening in the first place. This is one step that will help us do just that. Going forward to tackle this issue, any steps that the Government take now to understand the scale of the problem will be most welcome. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as we approach the end of Committee, it has been refreshing, even though we are not in the main Chamber, that there has been so much general consensual, constructive discussion. We have had a lot of interesting, erudite, probing amendments—erudite inasmuch as they have been thoughtful and have tried to get to the heart of what we think is happening with this Bill and what we need to see changed. It has been enjoyable working across parties, including the Front Bench, the Opposition, Back-Benchers, Cross-Benchers, non-affiliated Peers and so on.

I have got that out of the way so that I can say that I do not know why on earth the main Opposition are obsessed with sickfluencers and have tabled this amendment, and I therefore want to speak to it. One of the reasons is because I think the amendment misses the target completely and draws together some of the issues around why I have had some worries about the Bill in general. Let me explain. I am speaking against Amendments 125A and 129A, which focus on the problem of sickfluencers and those using electronic communications and the internet to help people “circumvent eligibility checks”.

This should not be made into any kind of criminal offence—with, according to the amendment, a threat of up to one year in prison—but we do have a cultural problem of encouraging and inciting increasing numbers to identify themselves as sick and in need of state support. I think that is where the focus should be, not on these malevolent so-called sickfluencers corrupting the nation. I am worried that these amendments miss the target and potentially distract our gaze from where we should be targeting.

For example, in relation to circumventing eligibility checks, I am sure noble Lords are aware of a recent story from Oxford University, which has admitted that, because of a long waiting list and a logjam for diagnosis in relation to ADHD, it has decided that it will use as supporting documentation a referral to a GP or to an NHS assessment service as sufficient for students to get special concessions in exams and assessments. This is one of our top academic institutions allowing young people to circumvent the eligibility checks that were there until recently. They can gain benefits from this much lower eligibility check, which is inevitably likely to incentivise self-diagnosis among those students. It is in that context that we have seen the growth of sickfluencers.

Videos with the hashtag “#mentalhealth” have amassed something like 17 billion views on TikTok over recent years, according to an academic study. But they have been about self-diagnosis, not about how we can rip off PIPs. They are, broadly, a cultural problem. My worry is that we are seeing the growth of what one psychiatrist has labelled the “mental health industrial complex”: increasing numbers of people prepared to enter into this discussion about what mental health is beyond the medical profession. That often comprises a plethora of therapists, who are unregulated, well-being experts and even mental health charities with huge budgets—some from government contracts—that have got us into a situation where increasing numbers of people are culturally incentivised to view the trials and tribulations of life and feelings of unhappiness and depression through the pathologised prism of medical labels. This is something that Tony Blair talked about last year, on which I uncharacteristically agreed with him.

These sickfluencers are leading to a huge spike in numbers adopting an identity of mental fragility and illness and creating an increasing cohort of citizens demanding official diagnosis statements, NHS interventions, pharmacological and therapeutic treatment and, of course, welfare support. That is fuelling and feeding into some of the controversies around personal independent payments, increasing the numbers on disability living allowance and so on.

I am trying to avoid that particular row about cuts in welfare, which are causing such consternation for the Government at the moment. My point is that it is not online sickfluencers—it is such a stupid word—who have created this culture of encouraging people to view themselves as in need of support. I have a lot of sympathy with the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, who conceded that mental health conditions are being overdiagnosed, meaning that the number of working-age adults who we officially designate as incapacitated and in need of various forms of state support are being effectively written off as young people. It is to do with overdiagnosis. That is where all our energy should be. One of the reasons why I have kicked back against a lot of Part 2 of this Bill, some parts of which are draconian overreach, as a sledgehammer to crack a nut is that there is a much deeper problem in why the welfare bill is so huge that goes beyond people acting fraudulently in relation to benefits.

I would be more sympathetic if the Opposition had taken on the real problems here. Governments of all parties, the previous one and this, have pushed official awareness campaigns, which encourage ever greater numbers of people to see themselves as in need of welfare and provide a script for people to follow. I have written extensively about this in a different context. Children in playgrounds use the therapeutic language of mental ill health. They got that from adults. We have to ask what is going on.

Dr Alastair Santhouse, a neuropsychiatrist at Maudsley and author of a new book called No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis, notes that

“the more people are aware of a particular illness, the more people start to identify with the symptoms”.

Officially backed awareness campaigns are really problematic. I have just written the foreword to a new pamphlet entitled Suffer the Children: Why Having a ‘Mental Health Professional’ in Every School is not the Answer, brilliantly written by Lucy Beney. She notes that schools now have a veritable army of educational mental health practitioners, emotional literacy support assistants, mental health first-aiders and so on, and the outcome of this is more and more pupils describing themselves as suffering from mental ill health.

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[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, we come to the final group, which I am pleased to open. I thank noble Lords who have participated in this Committee, particularly the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Anderson, on behalf of my friend Lady Finn, and all the officials for their answers to remarks and questions. I know that spending hours in Grand Committee is not a massively appealing prospect, particularly on these rather hot and stuffy days. We probably all deserve a drink after this.

Over the course of these days, we have raised some important questions and concerns that we have for the Government on a Bill that, despite its technical title, is quite important. I feel that the Committee has come together on several key issues around safeguarding, proper independent oversight of these powers and the costs, as I said a moment ago, that we will impose on banks.

We have outlined areas of the Bill that could threaten the well-being of and access to services for benefits claimants, we have raised concerns over the powers granted to the PSFA and we have brought our remarks not only on these Benches but across the Committee back to the principle of that important word “proportionality”. While we need to tackle the issue of public sector fraud robustly, we must do so in a way that is nuanced, safe and effective. This is a significant Bill in respect of the problem that it is trying to tackle and the powers that it is seeking to grant. It deserves our full attention and scrutiny for that reason, and I feel that much of the debate that we have had reflects that point.

Amendment 131 is a sunset clause, requiring that the net benefit of provisions in the Act must exceed £500 million per annum at the end of a period of five years. Its basic purpose is to set a standard for the performance and return on investment made as a result of the provisions in the Bill. We have heard many times about the scale and scope of the challenge that we are facing with respect to public sector fraud. Amendment 131 seeks to bring us back to the fundamental principle that our purpose should be the recovery of public money in a way that genuinely benefits the taxpayer.

We have spoken a lot about costs over the past few weeks and today. It is important that we pursue this policy in a way that is cost effective and recovers money in a meaningful and tangible way. This is about being responsible with taxpayers’ money, and we must ensure that we get a return on investment to approach this issue sensibly and pragmatically.

We have agreed pretty unanimously on the principle of returning to the taxpayer money that has been gained fraudulently, but there is no point in pursuing the policy if it does not give us a sufficient return on that investment. In other words, this would set a benchmark for efficacy and cost-effectiveness. If these powers are delivering real value for money, then they would remain. If they are not, then Parliament must revisit them—hence the amendment.

The public rightly expect that the powers we grant to Ministers and departments are not only proportionate but demonstrably effective. They do not want systems that are costly to administer and burdensome to operate and yield little in return, nor should they be expected to accept them. This amendment would simply create a clear feedback mechanism. It asks that the Government show their working and provide an evidence-based justification for retaining powers that intrude on privacy, create obligations for banks and place additional burdens on both government departments and third parties. If the system is working and recovering public money effectively and efficiently, then, as I said earlier, there is no difficulty in meeting that threshold, but if it is not then we should have the courage and accountability to stand back and reassess.

Let us also be clear: the amendment would not automatically repeal the Act in five years’ time. It would allow for its continuation if and only if the system works. It would not constrain the Government’s ambition but demand proof of delivery—and what is wrong with that? At a time of tightening public finances and growing digital scrutiny, it is more important than ever that new powers are not just well intentioned but demonstrably worth while, and this sunset clause would help to ensure that. It would build a clear and measurable standard, and it would respect Parliament’s duty to monitor the impact of the legislation that it enacts. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I shall say a few words despite my earlier promise and add to this moment of harmony. This is an interesting amendment to finish off Committee. I talked earlier about sledgehammers and nuts. I am concerned about civil liberties being constrained by the Bill. There are huge invasions of privacy and things that I worry about in terms of overreach of state power, but we can be assured all the time that this is about protecting public money.

When we describe everything from organised crime to fake charities getting money from the state and so on, understandably, we then think, “Are we trying to balance this out? Is it proportional? Do we have to make compromises on freedoms in order to crack down on it?” I am not yet convinced that that proportionality exists, and I know that we will pursue some of that on Report. What will remain of this Bill are those powers, but I am not convinced that the money accrued back will justify the kind of powers that the Government are giving themselves.