My Lords, it has been a privilege to be at the ringside during these three groups. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, is well
ahead on points and that, when we last left the Minister, he was on the ropes, so I hope that to avoid the knock- out he comes up with some pretty good responses today, especially as we have been lucky enough to have the pleasure of reading Hansard between the second and third groups. I think the best phrase that noble Baroness had was the “astonishing breadth” of Clause 128 and Schedule 11 that we explored with horror last time. I very much support what she says.
The current provisions seem to make the code non-mandatory, yet we discovered they are without “reasonable suspicion”, the words that are in the national security legislation—fancy having the Home Office as our model in these circumstances. Does that not put the DWP to shame? If we have to base best practice on the Home Office, we are in deep trouble.
That aside, we talked about “filtering” and “signals” last time. The Minister used that phrase twice, I think, and we discovered about “test and learn”. Will all that be included in the code?
All this points to the fragility and breadth of this schedule. It has been dreamt up in an extraordinarily expansive way without considering all the points that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has mentioned, including the KC’s opinion, all of which point to the fact that this schedule is going to infringe Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I hope the Minister comes up with some pretty good arguments.
My final question relates to the impact assessment–or non-impact assessment. The Minister talked about the estimate of DWP fraud, which is £6.4 billion. What does the DWP estimate it will be after these powers are implemented, if they are ever implemented? Should we not have an idea of the DWP’s ambitions in this respect?