Fraud Bill [Lords]

I must confess that the hon. Gentleman has foxed me with that intervention. Being a man of limited intellect, I was never a great student of Shakespeare, but perhaps we can meet afterwards to talk it through. I am sure that he is talking perfect sense and thank him for that intervention. I shall now deal with particular provisions, starting with clause 2, which the hon. Member for Rhondda also spoke about. We have seen the promotion of fraud conducted over computers through e-mail and the internet. The hon. Member for Rhondda and others mentioned phishing, but there are also the K-scams, largely from Nigeria, where people are told that they will receive a large sum of money from a relative of the former deposed king or local warlord who has $55 million to launder. People are asked to send £20,000 so that they can have the whole lot. Unbelievably, people are still falling for it. We have to go with the adage: if it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. In plain and simple, non-Shakespearean English, if it looks too good to be true, ignore it and walk to the other side of the street. How will the Bill deal with international scams, as phishing and K-scams are run from Africa, by and large, or from parts of the former Soviet Union that are not yet in the European Union? Clause 3 deals with failure to disclose information. A classic example would be the estate agent who visits an elderly or young person’s home and says, ““I have looked at your very nice home and you should put it on the market for £165,000.”” Lo and behold, a buyer turns up the next day and offers to buy it for that sum. The seller is extremely happy and the deal goes through, but he then discovers that the home was really worth £220,000 and that the estate agent undervalued it so that one of his mates could buy it, only to put it straight back on the market with the two splitting the profit. That is a classic example of fraud, which I hope the Bill addresses. Clause 4 deals with fraud by abuse of position. Before I entered Parliament, I worked in recruitment businesses and what went on in some of our offices was phenomenal. Nice young men or women would be hired and given a computer at their desk. They would work away, but a year later, we might find out that they were running a completely parallel business from that desk. They might have downloaded all the company’s information on its candidates and clients, crossed it over to their computers and run two businesses. If they were caught, they would be fired, but they would often leave with all the data and set up business down the road—another classic example. I congratulate the Government on introducing legislation to deal with that sort of fraud. I am in a very congratulatory mood today. One part of the Bill causes me some concern and I am sure that someone will say that I am making a fatuous point about clause 11, which deals with obtaining services dishonestly. It strikes me that the rights to cover test matches at the Oval are owned jointly by Sky and the England and Wales Cricket Board. Fair enough. Will the clause be used against the hundreds of people who like to dangle out of windows or sit on the roofs of the houses around the Oval, watching the cricket? The point is not necessarily fatuous and it is worth raising. People could get a knock on the door from Sky or the England and Wales Cricket Board, who then ask them what they are doing accessing the match. They might say, ““You haven’t paid to access the match, so please remove yourselves from the windows or roofs.””