Fraud bill

I understand the need to tackle fraud, but this bill goes too far. It risks giving public bodies broad access to people’s bank accounts, treating everyone like suspects rather than supporting those in need.

Mistakes aren’t the same as fraud, and many vulnerable people could be unfairly caught up in this. I don’t claim means-tested benefits myself, but if I did, I’d strongly object to this level of intrusion. Privacy and fairness matter.

We have to ask ourselves, is this really the way to treat the most vulnerable in our society?

And the sad truth is, it’s rarely the real fraudsters who get caught. It’s usually people who’ve made a genuine mistake or who don’t even realise they’ve done something wrong. This bill risks punishing the wrong people while the real offenders slip through the net.

The system being used for the new Fraud, Error Debt Bill is different from the Horizon system that led to the Post Office scandal. The government plans to use an algorithmic system to detect potential benefit fraud by compelling banks to share account data.

Concerns have been raised that this approach could lead to errors similar to those seen in the Horizon scandal, with innocent people potentially being wrongly flagged as fraudently.