Welfare Reform Bill

I thank the Minister. Perhaps I may address some of the points that he raised because I still feel deeply concerned. I probably have slightly more concerns now than I did previously. I do not say that provocatively and I will try to say why. First, it should be made clear that this is a civil penalty that does not deal with fraud issues. There are separate clauses for that. The stated purpose of this civil penalty is to improve people’s behaviour in the accuracy of their form-filling. The concept of introducing the civil penalty worries me, particularly for a community of people with a greater concentration of the vulnerable lower levels of numeracy and literacy, and when we are taking this means of a civil penalty to address behaviours, some of which are systemic and cannot be dealt with simply by handing out civil penalties here, there and everywhere—notwithstanding that the Minister said that that is not the intention. The Minister said that Clause 113 goes on to say that there will be no penalty if you take reasonable steps to correct the error, but the point is that someone cannot take reasonable steps to correct an error if he does not know that he has made it. That is the problem. Someone could face the civil penalty before having the chance to put it right because he does not know that he has done something wrong. A concentration of people will be increasingly in the category of not knowing that they have made the error when filling out the form. The Minister also said that I should not be worried about how the powers will be deployed, but he gave me one of the reasons why I am concerned. Quite rightly, and I do not disagree with him, he said that a civil penalty always comes at the same time as recovering an overpayment. If you issue a civil penalty, you have confirmed that there is an error, so it must follow that there is the recovery of an overpayment. If ever an incentive were articulated, that is it. You do not have to exercise discretion on overpayments; the awarding of a simple penalty puts you straight into going for that overpayment. No other considerations come into play. You make the easier decision to award a civil penalty because you do not then have to make the more complex decision about how to apply a discretion to an overpayment.