Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of amendments 10, 11 and 12, which stand in my name. I would like to start, though, by placing on record my thanks to the Minister for Transformation, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), including for his willingness to engage in a discussion on the terms of this Bill. It has been extremely helpful, so I wanted to place that on record.

I also make it clear that my amendments do not in any way seek to undo or frustrate the Government’s legitimate aim of recovering public money from fraudsters and criminals. We absolutely need to do that to ensure that criminal behaviour does not undermine the benefits, legitimacy or standing of our welfare system. The Bill rightly seeks to tackle organised crime and online fraud, but worryingly it also ushers in dangerous new powers compelling banks to trawl through financial information.

[Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I support his amendments. The fact is that millions of innocent people whose behaviour has attracted no suspicion at all will be subject to intrusion into their bank accounts. Is it not odd that there is also access to bank accounts for the £40 billion of tax unpaid by tax avoiders, but that power is rarely used? In the last year for which I have seen figures, 300,000 people were suspected of tax avoidance, but only 1,000 had their banks investigated. Is it not the case that this legislation appears to treat wealthy tax avoiders differently from the poor?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. It is the very poorest in our society who will be most affected by this legislation. Banks will be able to trawl through financial information even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing—that is the key point in this debate. The very poorest, including disabled people on PIP, older people on pension credit, carers and those on universal credit, will effectively have fewer rights to privacy than everyone else. I am also deeply concerned about the slippery slope of compelling banks to act as an arm of the state.

Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your guidance, Sir Edward. I thank the Petitions Committee for arranging the debate, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for her powerful opening speech. While I am in the business of thanking people, let me thank the tens of thousands of WASPI women who I have met around the country over the years, fighting for what they see to be justice. I agree with them. That organisation will not simply disappear, and the Government cannot simply ignore it—they will not be allowed to. The WASPI women have many friends and allies in this place on both sides of the House who will work with them to try to secure justice.

When I voted for the reimbursement of the WASPI women the other day, I did so with two thoughts in my mind. The first was that there is something going wrong with the way we govern our country. Our governing class has lost touch with the people in general. It is very important that we begin to think hard about why that has happened and what we do about it. The first step must be that politicians say what they mean and mean what they say. I told the WASPI women in my constituency, and everywhere else I have met them, that I would back them until they get justice. I will continue to do so.

Beyond individual politicians, the structures of our politics are no longer working properly. The ombudsman was set up especially to allow citizens who feel an injustice to go to an organisation separate from the state to pursue justice. How can that organisation, which is there to give voice to people, be ignored by a Government of whichever side? This debate should not be about finger pointing between the parties, but let us be clear that previous Governments introduced these measures and failed to implement the ombudsman’s report, so it is a problem for the whole House.

After thinking about changing our politics, my second thought was about social justice. It is not fair that women were told at the last possible moment, with the state sitting on a report for 28 months, that their financial arrangements would change. I had a look at what happened in Spain: the Government increased the retirement age to 67, but they did it over 14 years. That allowed people to make their own financial plans about their circumstances. Each person knew what was coming in due course. The British state, of course, because of the gap between the public and the governing class, failed to do such a thing.

Let me give one constituency case of a woman who came to see me. She was 58, had worked all her life and had saved a small amount of money, working hard and not earning very much. Her mum and dad were seriously ill, but she had enough money saved to get through to being 60, so she retired and went to look after them, only to discover to her horror that she would have to wait for years for the pension to come in. The money she had saved was not sufficient. Next, sadly, her mum and dad died, and she was left with no support or income of any kind—no carer’s allowance, nothing. She was left in total poverty, as a result of the state’s failure to say what would happen to her in her life.

The state cannot be allowed to make decisions that transform people’s lives in such a way through no fault of their own—people who have worked and paid tax all their life. Millions of women have suffered in their own individual way, and all of us will have heard lots of stories about that. There are 6,170 WASPI women in my constituency alone; my majority is 6,600. Members can work that out for themselves—look at the numbers. Each one of those women will have family members who feel a burning sense of injustice too. But it should not be about us and saving our seats; it should be about what is right, about justice and about a different kind of politics entirely.

It seems to me that options were available, but the then Government ignored them. There could have been a proper transition. Now we have an ombudsman’s report that has made clear recommendations and that imposes an obligation on us—every Member of this House—to implement them. We must do that. Let me make one final point—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a five-minute limit—sorry, Jon.

Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Jon Trickett Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I wish to make a few points. First, it would have been impossible not to note the zeal of the Secretary of State when she was banging on the Dispatch Box and talking about fraud and loss to the taxpayer, and she is right to do that. We, on this side of the House at least, believe in public expenditure, and therefore there is a duty on us to ensure that every single penny is spent in an appropriate manner. So where it is wasted or stolen or fraud is going on, we should bear down on it.

However, although the Secretary of State started off with that zeal and passion in talking about the gangs and others, she talked most about benefit claimants. Although the Bill sets up powers for the fraud authority, it deals largely with the question of fraud in the benefit system. But the title of the Bill mentions both fraud and error, and not enough time has been spent in this debate on the nature of error, which is far bigger than can be easily acknowledged.

I looked at the figures for PIP. Between 2019 and 2024 some one in four cases for alleged fraud by PIP recipients were dropped before reaching appeal, indicating the decision had lapsed because the Department had decided in favour of the appellant. That indicates the scale of the error that this Bill also wants to address. I am going to refer to a couple of cases in a moment or two, but at the core of this Bill is the creation, effectively, of a partnership between the state and the private banks, and the Bill does not make clear what that partnership will look like. I hope that we get some clarity on that before the Bill reaches Committee.

The banks themselves have said that they are very worried about this Bill, because they have a statutory duty, imposed by this House, to make sure that they deal properly with vulnerable clients. The banks have said there is a contradiction between the contents of this Bill and the obligations that fall on them and their duty to treat people who are vulnerable in a proper way. I want to reflect on that briefly.

Let me give the House a case from my own constituency that is symptomatic of a wider problem. A couple were referred to my office. They both had learning difficulties, both were illiterate and innumerate, and they found it impossible on their own to fill in the dozens and dozens of questions which the forms require people to fill in to get access to the benefits. So they were helped to put the form together by people employed to look after such people. The DWP then decided, years later, that it had made an error and had overpaid the couple by a large amount. This error came to light as a result of a review of some kind in the Department. So here is a very poor and vulnerable couple who were unable to fill in the form on their own and who had been helped by professionals, and what did the state do? It sent them a bill for £20,000.

All Members will have a great deal of empathy—they would not be in this job otherwise—so we can imagine the state that couple were in when they received a bill from the state to repay £20,000. It was discovered after they came to my office that they had in fact filled in all the forms correctly; this was a computer error caused by someone failing to key in some of the information that had been provided to the DWP. Neither the council which was helping them nor their support workers spotted the fact they were being overpaid; nobody spotted it, so this went on for a number of years and the sum reached £20,000. A deeply vulnerable couple were left in that situation.

Eventually they encountered a local councillor in my constituency who referred them to me. We went through the whole thing and managed to make an appeal on their behalf. But this Bill gives people only 28 days once they have received an order to pay. It took us longer than 28 days to resolve this once it had got into my office. I just say to the Secretary of State that 28 days is not long enough in these complicated cases for people to produce the evidence to show they are a victim of error rather than they have committed a fraud. There was a presumption by the state that they had committed a fraud of £20,000, totally incorrectly, it turned out.

I worry that the Bill will put people like my constituents, and I imagine constituents of every Member in this House, in the same position. My constituents were fortunate to find an MP, but many people in that situation would not know how to find their way through the system.

That raises the question I have referred to about the banks. The banks have a statutory duty to protect vulnerable customers. How will they exercise that duty when they are being required to provide information to the DWP about the financial activities of various individuals banking with them?

On the subject of vulnerability, Disability Rights UK tells us that one third of all claimants of legacy benefits have mental health problems. I imagine that most of those people would be regarded as vulnerable by the banks and by every humane person in this House. One therefore wonders just exactly how we will reconcile the statutory duty on the banks with what they are required to do in relation to this Bill.

We are giving powers to this fraud authority. I personally am in favour of tackling fraud, as I have said—I am a Yorkshireman, and I do not like spending money. I do not like money being spent wastefully by the state either, and when I was the leader of Leeds city council, everyone knew I was strong on waste.

Finally on vulnerability, have the Government commissioned and received an equality impact assessment? If they have, can that be placed in the Commons Library, because the Bill will clearly have an impact on people who are extremely vulnerable? I think something somewhere in the Department will refer to that impact assessment.

I will make a couple of final points. It is suggested that the Bill will save £300 million a year by tackling benefit fraud. That is a large amount of money, but we can compare it with the £10 billion of fraud on personal protective equipment provided during covid, the £16 billion lost to the taxpayer in fraudulent covid schemes, the £5.5 billion a year of tax evasion, or the £6 billion of other illegal activities against HMRC. The £300 million is important, but it is not the largest amount of fraud that is taking place. The fraud authority is getting new powers and will be staffed up. How will it choose among the disproportionate amounts by which the state is being defrauded by various different agencies, by private individuals and, frankly, by some gangsters, too? Will the staffing be allocated according to the prejudices of politicians—whichever politicians are then in charge—or will it be allocated proportionately to the loss to the taxpayer incurred through different forms of fraud?

My final point is on the Information Commissioner. The Secretary of State suddenly announced that she received a letter today—it would be interesting to read it—but the Information Commissioner had been suggesting that the powers were disproportionate. We need to see the letter, and hopefully it will go into the Library or somewhere.

Clause 74, which empowers schedule 3 to the Bill, goes right to the kernel of the problems with this Bill, which could not be clearer. I am worried that it is not apparent how the intervention of banks will be invoked. Schedule 3 allows the banks to be invoked and then for action to take place. Will the bank account of every single citizen in the UK be looked at? That is the view of some campaign groups in society. If so, that is a massive incursion into the liberty that the British people hold dear. If not, how will the banks be asked to identify particular individuals? What process will be gone through? That is not clear, and the Bill does not explain it. I have read clause 74 two or three times, as have many other people.

Finally, can we be assured—not necessarily now, but as the Bill progresses through its various stages—exactly how that right of appeal will work? I have just referred to the 28-day cut-off, but will the Secretary of State look again at that? It seems to me that it is slightly too tight.