My Lords, I hope that this can be a short, sharp debate because it is about a very clear matter of principle.
Clause 67(4) provides that councils can recover money paid out on claims for any benefit in Part 1 of the Bill which are made in error—and here are the operative words—“whether fraudulently or otherwise”. My amendment would substitute a longer form of words whereby councils can recover where a claim,
“fraudulently or negligently misrepresents or fails to disclose any material fact that they might have reasonably been aware would have a bearing on expenditure incurred by the local authority”.
That is designed to narrow the scope of the “otherwise” that allows councils to recover in all circumstances. In other words, as the Bill stands, someone who applies for a benefit who inadvertently errs in their application can be pursued to repay the full resulting cost to the council, including the cost of the council’s action, I think. My amendment preserves the recovery if the claim was fraudulent but otherwise allows it only if the old person was negligent. In a sentence, it protects the claimant who makes a slip.
I will give an example of what could happen under the Bill as it is worded. An old person applies for a deferred payment loan on their house so as not to have to sell it. Unfortunately, they make a slip in declaring their assets: they forget some bank account or other. If they had declared it, their assets would have exceeded the £23,250 limit, which the House discovered to its surprise now applies to anybody who wishes to apply for a loan; they cannot apply for a loan if they have more than £23,250. The local authority later finds out and demands its loan back; it perhaps forces the house to be sold to pay it back. I do not suggest that this is going to happen regularly or often but we should not allow the possibility that it should happen at all.
I raised this matter in Committee and subsequently discussed it, with the Minister’s encouragement, with his officials. My aim was to find a compromise that protected the old person who had made a mistake in applying for the benefit while enabling the local authority to go after somebody who was deliberately trying to get something they were not entitled to or who had behaved extremely stupidly and should have known better than to claim.
I thought we were making headway in those discussions but last week the Minister sent me a note refusing to change the Bill. I must say that this is wholly out of character for the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who is usually the most humane of men, and I beg him to think again. If he does not like my wording, that is fine; I am quite happy to consider any other wording that he and his officials may put forward that avoids the pitfalls I suggested. What I will not accept is anything short of an amendment to the Bill.
I know, because he said so in his note to me, that the Minister may claim that he can provide guidance which stops this sort of illegitimate recovery of a debt incurred through error. To that I say two things: first, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and I would rather change the Bill now than to rely on promised guidance, which we have not seen and could not later amend; secondly, it is not only the people the council would prosecute or seek to get their money back from
that we need to worry about. A lot of old people are quite nervous about handling financial affairs—quite rightly, given the complexity of these affairs. They might be thinking of applying for a benefit but if they learn that, under a Bill passed by this Parliament, if they make a slip they can have their assets seized to repay it, many of them will simply decide not to apply at all.
I think I have a pretty thick skin but I was a bit surprised when I read in the newspapers this morning a Conservative spokesman quoted as saying that this was a politically motivated amendment. Just to set the record straight: it was not my idea to amend the Bill in this way. This amendment was put forward by Age UK, which sent a note to all noble Lords explaining why it believes it to be necessary. We all know Age UK: it is a splendid group working for old people. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, used to run its predecessor. A less political organisation than Age UK is hard to imagine, so I hope that the Minister will apologise for the inadvertent—I am sure—slur that has been cast on Age UK.
I should add that Age UK believes that the Bill may be in breach of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In a House which earlier on displayed such expertise on the subject of the European Convention on Human Rights, I am certainly not going to express my own opinion on whether that view is right or wrong. Nothing could be more stupid than for us to pass this Bill in its present form and later on to find it challenged in the courts, and perhaps overturned.
My argument does not rely on the convention on human rights. It relies on what seems to me to be a simple fact, obvious to anybody who reads this clause in the Bill. This is not the kind of legislative provision that you would expect in a democracy. It is a provision which enables authorities here, in Britain, to punish the innocent and, in the process, to terrify people who might otherwise apply for benefits to which they are entitled. I beg to move.
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