Serious Crime Bill [HL]

I thank the Minister for a pretty full reply. I am not sure whether it was quite full enough but we will get to that in due course. First, the noble Baroness implied that there was some difference in motive over this amendment between us and the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, on the Liberal Democrat Benches. So far as we were concerned, it was largely a probing amendment, but we may want to come back to it at a later stage despite the fullness of the noble Baroness’s response. Secondly, the Minister ended with a remark about housing benefit to my noble friend Lord Lucas. I do not underestimate the scale of the problem of fraud involving housing benefit or other social security benefits. It is now 15 years since I was responding from the government Benches on social security and I remember being grilled on a number of occasions by noble Lords about the alleged £2 billion a year being lost in social security fraud—a great deal of that sum was housing benefit. The figure under this Government is considerably greater than it was then. The noble Baroness shakes her head; I may put that question to her directly on another occasion. I understand how serious the issue is. We are behind the noble Baroness on that so long as we can get these things right. Thirdly, we want to look very carefully at everything that the noble Baroness said. I asked many questions when I moved the amendment and I think I heard responses to some, but certainly not all, of them. My noble friend Lord Lucas did not hear answers to all his questions. I did not hear the noble Baroness deal with the comparisons that the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, and I made with Germany. She did not deal with the national identity register. No doubt she will deal with those later or we will raise them at a later stage.