My Lords, I will also speak to the other amendments in my name, which are designed to dig further into exactly what the Government plan to do with these powers. Amendments 220 to 222 are probing amendments which seek to establish what would happen if the powers to give account information notices were used only where there is suspicion that benefits are not being paid as the law intends. I will try
to use this to find out exactly what will happen with the signal that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has been referring to.
7.15 pm
Can the Minister explain how this will differ from what the DWP can do at the moment with its powers? As far as I understand it, the plan is this: first, the DWP will ask banks to find accounts into which benefits are paid or linked accounts; secondly, the DWP will specify criteria such as capital limits and assets; thirdly, the bank will go hunting for accounts which meet those criteria. What will happen in the fourth stage? What will the bank or body tell the DWP? Will they simply say, “Yes, Mr X ticks those boxes”, and then the DWP will use its other powers to do whatever it wants, or will information be taken from the bank and given to the DWP? It would be helpful if the Minister could explain it in really simple language for those of us unfamiliar with how the DWP’s processes work.
The question of scale keeps coming back. I do not know how many people will be covered by these powers. I started adding up the numbers on the main benefits: there are almost 10 million people on the state pension, over 6 million on universal credit, roughly another 3 million on PIP and 1.6 million on ESA. There is some overlap there, but I got to around 18 million. That made me realise that I do not know what we are dealing with, because I did not have a clear list of benefits covered by these powers. They are not listed in the legislation. Rather, as the Minister explained in his last answer, the Bill says that the power to issue notices covers all relevant benefits as set out in paragraph 16 of Schedule 11. However, that paragraph refers to benefits defined in the Social Security Administration Act 1992 and two other Acts. I looked up the 1992 Act, which referred to benefits covered by a list of 13 other Acts. This way of defining benefits is not unusual in social security legislation, but the bottom line is that I still did not have a list of all the benefits.
I confess that I went to officials, who were astonishingly kind and helpful and enabled me to get one. I hope the Committee will indulge my reading it into the record, because it is important that people know what they are—I will do so even more quickly than I normally speak, which I recognise is at the speed of light.
The relevant benefits are: attendance allowance, DLA, income support universal credit, housing benefit universal credit, council tax benefit, widowed parent’s allowance, state pension, state pension credit, additional pensions, state maternity allowance, bereavement payment, bereavement allowance, bereavement support payment, attendance allowance, Christmas bonus for pensioners, statutory parental bereavement pay, statutory neonatal care pay, industrial injuries benefit, guardian’s allowance, industrial injury benefit, incapacity for work, expenses of paying sums in respect of vehicle hire et cetera, universal credit, health and pregnancy grant, child benefit, JSA, ESA, PIP, social fund awards, sickness benefit (incapacity benefit), invalidity benefit (incapacity benefit), diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme, disablement pension, invalidity pension and allowance, reduced earnings allowance, severe disablement allowance, sickness benefit, unemployability supplement, unemployment benefit,
care and attendance allowance, disablement pension increase, disability living allowance, mobility allowance, Christmas bonus, vaccine damage payment, carer’s allowance, carer support payment, carer element of universal credit, incapacity benefit, widowed mother’s allowance, widow’s pension, long-term incapacity benefit, child’s special allowance, graduated retirement benefit, invalid care allowance, retirement pension and community charge benefits.
However, it is more complicated than that. This still is not the whole story because, as the Minister explained, some of these are historic benefits which are not paid any more and others such as child benefit are complicated because they are the responsibility of HMRC, not the DWP. That does not take us all the way, but the bottom line is that I still do not have a list of which benefits the Government can and intend in practice to cover with these powers.
This all leads me to two conclusions. First, we need some consolidating legislation in the DWP very badly. Secondly, we need more clarity, so my Amendment 235 would require regulations specifying those working-age benefits to be covered by these powers to be approved by Parliament. If the Government do not like that, a simple solution would be for the Minister to tell the Committee which benefits the Government intend to use these powers on.
When Ministers started talking about these powers, the message was that they were focusing on people getting means-tested benefits who should not. Indeed, on 29 November my honourable friend Chris Bryant asked the Minister in the Commons if these powers would allow the Government to look at people getting the state pension. In reply, the then Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure, John Whittingdale, said:
“I can tell the hon. Gentleman that it is not the case that the DWP intends to focus on the state pension … This is specifically about ensuring that means-related benefit claimants are eligible for the benefits for which they are currently claiming
”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/11/23; col. 880.]
However, the Government will not rule out using these powers in relation to the state pension. The state pension is not means tested. The only things that affect its value to an individual pensioner are their contribution record, the date at which they reached state pension age and where they live. The DWP already knows the first two of those, so why does it need access to the bank accounts of people getting the state pension? I can think of only two possible reasons: either the Government want to keep open the option to test the means or assets of people who get the state pension, or they plan to trawl the bank accounts of almost 10 million pensioners in the UK to find out if they are spending time abroad, because UK pensions paid abroad are uprated only in certain countries.
The impact assessment reports that DWP did two proof-of-concept tests where it established data-sharing collaborations with two banks and focused on two risk areas. One was capital and the other was “abroad entitlement”, although I still do not know how you can distinguish between someone who has moved abroad and someone who is spending either a long holiday or lots of short holidays abroad—say, visiting their grandkids. In order to find that out, my Amendment 234 would remove pensions from the scope of these powers.
If the Minister does not agree with that amendment, perhaps he could tell us which of those two reasons is the one that the Government need these powers for.
Either way, do the Government plan to tell all the pensioners that they intend to use these powers? The Minister says the powers will be very popular and will have public support but I would be interested to know, if he told people that the Government were going to look into the bank account of every single pensioner in the country, whether they would still be popular then.
Amendment 222A was prompted by a letter that I received; I do not know if it was from the same person or a different one from that mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in the last group, but I suspect it was a different one. I will call her Mrs Carter to protect her identity. She has an adult son who has severe learning and communication difficulties. He will never be able to live independently or to have a job. He has been in receipt of benefits, or benefits have been paid for him, since childhood. When he turned 16, because of the severity of his disabilities, the DWP told his mother that she needed to be named as her son’s appointee and that she needed to set up a number 2 account in her name into which all his benefit money would be paid so that she could manage his funds for him on a day-to-day basis.
She asked me if that meant that the DWP could request information on the number 2 account because the son’s benefits were paid into it. At the same bank she has a current account and a savings account as well as a joint account with her husband, none of which play any part in her son’s finances, and she wanted to know whether those accounts could also be looked into. At first I assumed not because it is about the account into which the money is paid, but I had a look to be absolutely sure—because, as I said, I am a social security nerd.
Paragraph 2(2)(a) of new Schedule 3B says:
“An account information notice … may require information relating to a person who holds a matching account even if the person does not claim a relevant benefit”,
and the Explanatory Memorandum said that was about appointee accounts. We therefore have to conclude that information could be sought on the number 2 account in Mrs Carter’s name. Sub-paragraph (3) says that:
“‘Matching accounts’, in relation to a specified relevant benefit, are accounts … linked to the receipt of that benefit”.
Sub-paragraph (5) says that:
“An account is to be regarded as linked to the receipt of a particular relevant benefit if it is … an account into which the benefit is (or is to be) paid … an account into which the benefit has been paid, or … an account linked to an account within”
either of those types of account. Lastly—I will stop shortly—sub-paragraph (6) says that:
“An account is to be regarded as linked to another if the same person holds both accounts”.
Mrs Carter’s name is on the number 2 account, her own accounts and her joint account. My reading of this suggests that information could indeed be sought on any accounts in Mrs Carter’s name, including joint accounts, without her knowledge. Could the Minister specifically confirm if that reading is correct? If so, how can he justify it? If it is correct, and if he
accepts that it cannot be justified, will he accept Amendment 222A, which would simply make clear that the personal accounts of a benefit claimant’s appointee are not to be considered linked accounts for the purposes of fulfilling account information notices? I beg to move.