Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Siân Berry Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Steve Darling]

The Liberal Democrats support this Conservative amendment. I will not go over the arguments again, as they have been well put. Some clauses talk about safeguards. It is about the culture of the organisation, making sure that individuals have professional curiosity and how to foster that within the organisation. Professional curiosity can bear significant fruit for a number of Government organisations when they conduct activities, but broadly we are supportive.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I do not support the Conservative amendment. A lot of the discussion in Committee has been about reducing the risk of harm to potentially vulnerable people and people caught up in these frauds, who might not deserve to be punished in any way. I would not support taking out a measure that is there presumably to reduce the consequences of making an error. Therefore, I will not support the amendment.

[Georgia Gould]

I welcome the opportunity to respond to the amendment and to clarify an error that I made in a previous discussion that might have contributed to some confusion. When I talked about the recovery of debt and a limit to the amount that will be recovered, I mentioned up to 40% of assets when I meant to say credited amounts. To be clear, in the instance that the shadow Minister mentioned—say the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire defrauded the Government, they had £200,000 in their account and it was a lump sum, the powers would enable the PSFA to recover that money, with the safeguards of not leaving that person in financial destitution. The 40% is related to ongoing repayments and the speed of repayment. I hope that that gives some reassurance to the hon. Member.

To the points that Opposition Members have made about vulnerability and training, the PSFA authorised officers will be highly trained. They are subject to professional training and a code of ethics within that. That includes the kind of professional curiosity that the hon. Member for Torbay talked about. On debt recovery, they will work to establish debt practice, including the debt management vulnerability toolkit, which is publicly available. I would be pleased to send him those documents so he can understand the vulnerability assessments that will be made and scrutinise them.

To go through the detail of the clauses, specifically for a regular direct deduction order, the total deductions in a 28-day period must not exceed either 40% or 20% of the amount credited to the account in the relevant period: for fraud, 40% is the maximum; for error, the maximum is 20%. Throughout the Bill, we have sought to bring powers that are used elsewhere into the PSFA, not to create brand new powers for the PSFA. This provides assurance of their effective and proportionate use, and we are doing the same here. The 40% maximum limit is in line with existing legislation, such as the DWP’s existing direct earnings attachment powers and the Child Maintenance Service deduction from earnings order powers.