This week there are no listed contributions for Sussex MPs in Parliament, however this afternoon the e-Petition of ‘700138 relating to inheritance tax relief for working farms’ described as ‘Don’t change inheritance tax relief for working farms’ will be discussed. It achieved 148,000 signatures with the largest signing from Arundel and South Downs.

Last Monday there was an important debate ‘Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill’, approved by Labour with 340 votes. A group of 87 MPs rejected it with Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru and DUPs. Two Sussex MPs spoke at length.

First, Siân Berry: “I will speak against giving it a Second Reading and, alongside my fellow Green Members, will vote against it later…. It has a focus on fraud when a far bigger issue is unclaimed and under-claimed benefits due to a lack of awareness, complexity in the system and stigma…. The Chair of the Select Committee, Debbie Abrahams, set out the risk of damaging trust in and engagement with the DWP. We also have the risk of reigniting damaging and unfair stereotypes from some people involved in wider debates on these issues on social media, in newspapers and in broadcast media…. I had hoped better of this Government…. I have had so much correspondence on this from constituents…. I am talking about pensioners who need pension credit, people who are permanently disabled and whose entitlement to employment and support allowance is clear and settled, people who are precariously underemployed or unemployed who need universal credit, family carers, and people who are simply on low wages and cannot make ends meet. These are citizens, not suspects. The clauses about what appear to be routine and regular Government access to information from bank accounts for eligibility verification—not linked to serious crime—most concern me. I am also opposed to the clauses that increase powers of search and access to homes for more serious matters, and those that would remove driving licences from people who are having difficulty paying back to the DWP overpaid money due to what may simply be human error at a difficult time in their lives, not fraud at all. I therefore suggest that the Government come back to this House with the parts relating to covid fraud and to contractors and businesses, and maybe add something on the much bigger problem of tax fraud. On the rest, I suggest that they start again with a process of genuine listening and co-production…. This process would fit together very well with the recent proposal from the charity Mind in response to other upcoming changes to benefit processes, which asks for a new approach to the benefits system and a commission led by disabled people to redesign benefit assessments. Mind says that this kind of process would help to rebuild trust between disabled people and the DWP. I agree, and my personal view is that this Bill will do the absolute opposite.”

John Milne, Liberal Democrat for Horsham commented: “Many of my Horsham constituents have contacted me to say that the powers outlined in the Bill are very far-reaching and, if abused, could have hugely detrimental effects on benefit claimants through no fault of their own. As my hon. Friend Steve Darling said, the carer’s allowance repayment scandal shows exactly what can go wrong when the state has high-level powers over debt recovery. Due to departmental error, not the claimants’ error, there were more than 250,000 cases of overpayment to carers in the last five years of the Conservative Government. That is an enormous number. What would have happened to those carers, who are paid very little for the huge service to society that they provide, if the powers in the Bill had been in place during those five years? They would probably have faced forced withdrawals from their bank account, the possible removal of their driving licence or even forced entry to their home by the DWP. The Bill will give increased powers to access private bank accounts. This requires careful consideration from a civil liberties perspective. However, the DWP already has the power to compel third parties to share data where criminal activity is suspected. The new powers appear to reduce the need for prior evidence and simply grant access at will. Given that access to banking information is estimated to recover just 1.4% of the Government’s annual loss to fraud and error, do these powers of forced withdrawal represent a proportionate action?…. The Government have asserted that the public purse saving will be £1.5 billion, but in the absence of an impact statement, how do we know?…. In particular, we need to be sure that the savings predicted do not come from the blameless victims of departmental error, as happened with the carer’s allowance overpayment scandal. It is of huge importance that fraud be reduced, but until we are sure that we have learned the lessons of the past, we run the risk of damaging people’s lives for insufficient benefit. We are at risk of making the same mistakes again, but with fewer checks and balances…. I am concerned that it builds a narrative that assumes that the claimant is the guilty party, when it could be the Department that is at fault. I therefore call on the Government to apply all possible care before launching new regulations that, at present, would amount to a matter of trial and error.”