The Department for Work and Pensions has been told it must reveal exactly who will be targeted in new anti-fraud laws allowing officials to money directly from people’s bank accounts. Measures in the DWP Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill allow officials to recover money directly from fraudsters’ bank accounts and have the power to obtain bank statements from people they believe have enough cash to pay back welfare debts, but are refusing to do so.
But experts expressed concerns about the draft legislation and Dr Rasha Kassem, a senior lecturer and leader of the Fraud Research Group at Aston University, asked who exactly would be targeted.
She said: “I think this needs to be sorted in the Bill, not afterwards. For example, from a governance perspective, in the bill you say that you can access banks accounts and freeze assets, but whose?
“Are you going to take the assets from the organisation, the directors running the organisation or the fraud perpetrators inside the organisation?”
Courts would take a dim view if the legislation was unclear, she warned.
“This has to be sorted, because you will be faced by another issue, at least in courts, saying who is the controlling mind in the organisation.
“The organisation has a mind of its own legally, and therefore cannot be treated in the same way as when you deal directly with individuals. If that is sorted, there will hopefully be a higher probability of recovery and fewer loopholes in the bill.”
Courts could also suspend fraudsters’ driving licences following an application by the DWP, if they owe welfare debts of more than £1,000 and have ignored repeated requests to pay it back.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has said people entitled to claim benefits have “nothing to worry about” from the new powers contained in the Bill.
She said: “This Bill will help deliver the biggest ever crackdown on fraud against the public purse, which has now reached an astonishing £55 billion a year.
“This includes: fraud against our public services, like those who abuse the tax system; dishonest companies who use deception to win public contracts and manipulate invoices; and benefit fraud by criminal gangs and individuals, which now stands at a staggering £7.4 billion a year.”
She said the Information Commissioner’s Office has reviewed the Government’s proposals and is “very clear the measure now more tightly scopes the information that can and cannot be shared, specifies much more clearly those in the scope of the power, requires a code of practice that will be a statutory code of practice before measures are taken”.
But independent MP Zarah Sultana said: “These are not the hallmarks of a free and democratic society, but the tools of an Orwellian surveillance state.”
