My Lords, I join others in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, to this House. I look forward to hearing him in future debates.
This Bill is a large Bill, written in an utterly arcane language which normal people will struggle to understand and follow. Hopefully, the Government will try to write Bills in a better way, otherwise it is hard for people to understand the laws and follow them. I have grave misgivings about some parts of this Bill and I will touch on a couple of these issues, which have already been identified by a number of noble Lords.
George Orwell’s iconic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, raised the spectre of Big Brother. That nightmare has now been brought to reality by a Conservative Government supposedly rolling back the state. The Government have already undermined the people’s right to protest and to withdraw labour. Now comes snooping and 24/7 surveillance of the bank, building society and other accounts of the sick, disabled, poor, elderly and unfortunate, all without a court order. Over 22.4 million people would be targeted by that surveillance, but the account holders will not be told anything about the frequency and depth of this organised snooping.
In true Orwellian doublespeak, the Government claim that the Bill will
“allow the country to realise new post-Brexit freedoms”.
They link the surveillance to, and are stirring up, people’s fears about benefit fraud, while there is absolutely no surveillance of those receiving public subsidies, those mis-selling financial products, those accused of PPE fraud or even a former Chancellor who abused the tax system. Numerous court judgments have condemned the big accounting firms for selling illegal tax-dodge schemes and robbing the public purse, but despite those judgments no major accounting firm has, under this Government, ever been investigated, fined or prosecuted. None of the accounts of those partners or firms is under surveillance. The Bill is part of a class war: it targets only low-income and middle-income people, while big beasts get government contracts.
Currently, the Department for Work and Pensions can request details of bank accounts and transactions on a case-by-case basis on suspicion of fraudulent activity, but Clause 128 and Schedule 11 give the Government unrestrained powers to snoop. The Government say that the Bill
“would allow regular checks to be carried out on the bank accounts held by benefit claimants to spot increases in their savings which push them over the benefit eligibility threshold, or when people spend more time overseas than the benefit rules allow for. This will help identify fraud”
and
“take action more quickly”.
How prevalent is the benefit fraud that the Government wish to tackle? The Government estimate that, in 2023, they lost £8.3 billion to welfare fraud and errors, 80% of which is attributed to fraud. A government statement issued on 23 November said that, as a result of mass surveillance, benefit fraud would save the public purse
“£600 million over the next five years”.
On 29 November, in a debate in the other place, the Minister mentioned the figure of £500 million and, despite a number of challenges, did not correct that estimate. The Government are hoping that mass snooping will generate savings of £100 million to £120 million a year, but we do not have a breakdown of this saving and do not know how they have arrived at that number. I hope that the number is more reliable than the Government’s estimates of the HS2 costs. To put this into context, the Government are spending nearly £1,200 billion this year and they are introducing snooping to save about £100 million a year.
The snooping of bank accounts suggests that the Government are looking for unusual cash-flow patterns. What that means is that, if anyone gives a lump sum to a loved one for Christmas, a birthday, a holiday or home repairs, and it passes through their bank account, the Government could seize on that as evidence of excess resources and reduce or stop their benefits. Suppose that a poor person pawns some household items for a few pounds and temporarily boosts his or her bank balance. Would that person now be labelled a fraudster and lose benefits? The Government have not looked at the details of what would happen.
Many retirees have a joint bank account with another member of the family or with a friend. Under the Government’s crazy plans, the third party would also be put under surveillance because they happen to have a joint account. Can the Minister explain why people not receiving any social security benefits are to be snooped upon, because they would be caught in this trap?
How will the snoopers distinguish temporary and easily explainable boosts in bank balances from others? My background is that I am an accountant and I have investigated things over the years; I helped the Work and Pensions Committee investigate the collapses of BHS and Carillion. So I hope that the Minister can enlighten me on how all this will be done.
I hope that the Minister can also clarify the scope of the Bill as it applies to recipients of the state pension. The Government have classified it as a benefit, so can the Minister explain why? After all, the amount one gets is determined by the number of years of national insurance contributions. So why is it actually a benefit? The Minister in the other place said:
“I agree, to the extent that levels of fraud in state pensions being currently nearly zero, the power is not needed in that case. However, the Government wish to retain an option should the position change in the future”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/11/23; col. 912.]
Why do the Government want to snoop on the bank accounts of OAPs when there is hardly any fraud? Do they have some sinister plan to treat the state pension as a means-tested benefit? Perhaps the Minister could confirm or deny that. If he wishes to deny it, can he explain why the Government are targeting retirees? What have they done?
In this House, we have more than our fair share of senior citizens who receive a state pension, and their bank accounts would also be under surveillance. How long before a Government abuse that information to blackmail Members of this House and erode possibilities of scrutinising the Government of the day? It is opening us all up to blackmail, now or in the future.
In the past, the Government assured us that health data would not be sold—but then sold it to corporations, as we heard earlier. How can we trust the Government not to do the same with data collected via snooping on bank accounts? What will they be selling?
The mass surveillance is not subject to any court order. Concerned citizens will not be told, as their right to know will be further eroded by Clause 9. It is for the courts, not Ministers, to decide whether requests for data are vexatious or excessive. Can the Minister provide us with some data on how many requests for information are received by departments each year and what proportion have been declared to be vexatious and excessive by the courts? The Government cannot just say that they are vexatious—I would rather trust the courts.
Clause 9 obstructs government accountability and further erodes the Nolan principles. As a personal example, I fought a five and a half-year battle against the Treasury to learn about the closure of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in 1991. It was the biggest banking fraud of the 20th century, which has yet to be investigated. I asked the Treasury for some information and was totally fobbed off. I went to the Information Commissioner, who sided with the Treasury. So I went to the courts to get some information, with the possibility that the judges might declare my attempts to learn the truth vexatious and might even impose legal costs on me. Fortunately, that did not happen—I won the case and the Treasury had to release some documents to me.
The information showed that the Conservative Government were covering up money laundering, frauds, the secret funding of al-Qaeda, Saudi intelligence, arms smugglers, murderers and others. The information given to me has never been put on public record by this Government. Can you imagine what will happen now if quests to learn something about banking fraud are simply labelled vexatious and excessive? How will we hold the Government to account? The Bill makes it harder to shine some light on the secret state and I urge the Government to rethink Clause 9.
Finally, I urge the Minister to answer the questions I have raised, so that we can have a better Bill.
2.30 pm