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Lord Carter: Perhaps I may intervene. I am not sure that the noble Earl has quite understood the matter. I am sure that it is my fault and due to the way I explained it. The amendment is designed only to use the information which is collected under the Bill (the data matching, and all the rest) to see whether it would lead to determining whether people who are being employed are engaged in fraud. It is not intended to deal with the level of learning of the people joining the department or local authorities to do the job. It is only intended to allow information which is supplied under the Bill, through the data matching, to be used not just to check up on claimants, but to assess the suitability of staff who are employed to administer housing and council tax benefit. That is all.
The Earl of Balfour: Perhaps I may come back for a moment. Surely that is the supervisor's job. He has to be properly qualified. I was thinking of the other end of the scale, but fair enough.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: The amendments seek to extend the provisions in the Bill on the uses to which information supplied by the tax authorities and other government departments to the DSS and the Northern Ireland department may be put. It is worth reminding ourselves that some of the other government information relates to passports, immigration, emigration and nationality or prisoners. The amendments would allow the departments to use the information provided by those other government departments to check the suitability of staff employed for the purposes of administering social security benefits. They would also allow us to pass the information to local authorities administering housing or council tax benefit in order that they could use it to check the suitability of staff they employed on benefit work. The amendment does not specify what the criteria for assessing "suitability" might be, although I think I understand the point that the noble Lord is trying to make.
Although I do not have the figures to hand, there are some high profile cases of serious fraud which are conducted thanks to someone inside the system being either the leader of the fraud or one of the parties involved--someone who has, so to speak, been planted, inside the Benefits Agency local office usually, to help create the multiple identities or whatever it is that these fraudsters use in order to get money.
The problem can be a difficult one, of which we are well aware. We are well aware of the profile of the kind of person who often turns out to be an offender. We have a system of checks in place as part of our recruitment procedures, because it may be a major problem--I do not want to overstate it, because there are many parts of the country that it will never happen--especially in big cities, where anonymity is one of the cloaks behind which the crook can hide, which are obviously places which are open to this kind of "entryism" if I may call it that.
We check on recruitment. We check on a candidate's nationality, character, educational qualifications--to which my noble friend referred--and employment history before he is appointed. Of course, that is done with the authority of the candidate. Detailed guidance is issued to staff dealing with appointments as to how to carry out those checks, which will include checks with other government departments in cases where there is reason to doubt the veracity of information provided by the candidate or where potentially adverse information comes to light; for example, from a personal referee.
There are well-established procedures for making those checks. To carry out further checks against information held by some other government departments would be unlikely to provide additional advantages. The person trying to get in in order to perpetrate the fraud will have done his very best to make sure that his tracks are covered so that our investigations will not turn up anything which would cause us suspicion.
Of course, as the Committee will be aware, the Police Bill, which we debated recently, includes proposals for improving access to criminal record information for employment and related purposes. We do not have any control over local authority staff and appointments are a matter for the local authorities. But I am confident that all responsible local authorities will also apply checks to satisfy themselves about the suitability of their staff. We have no evidence to suggest that additional powers are needed in that area.
Where work is contracted out to a third party, the department and the local authorities will wish to satisfy themselves as to the probity of the contracting party and its security procedures before signing the contract. It is also normal practice to ensure that the contract reflects adequate arrangements for security, including the quality and probity of the staff appointed.
Perhaps I may give an example to the Committee. The contract which we signed recently with ICL Pathway for the administration of the benefit payment card system made specific provision not only for contractual responsibility for the confidentiality of benefit information but also the procedure used by Pathway to vet its staff needed to be approved by the DSS.
The provisions in the Bill are already adequate to allow the use of information supplied under the Bill from other government departments to detect internal as well as external fraud. Moreover, we already have a full range of procedures for checking the suitability of staff. We do not believe that this extra provision would add anything of real significance to our armoury. The amendment would give an extremely limited amount of extra help, and that would perhaps be disproportionate to the effort and additional bureaucracy involved.
While I suggest to the noble Lord that we should not expand the use that we make of this data--that would not be wise or helpful--I do not wish him to have any doubts as to our awareness of the problems that we have with "entryism"--people coming in and seeking jobs in order to place themselves in an insider position to commit fraud. We are well aware of that. People who do the recruiting inside the department watch very
carefully for that. Also, our internal auditors are always mindful of the problems which can arise if somebody inside the system decides to conspire with someone outside to defraud the department. Therefore, I should not wish the noble Lord to think that we are complacent about the matter. However, I do not think that the additional powers which he suggests we should take would balance out the problem that we have as regards data held on people, the use we make of that data and the privacy aspect.
Lord Carter: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Until he came to his last few sentences, I was going to say that it was a panglossian reply--that it was the best in the best of all possible worlds. He was half there. I am not sure whether it was "Pan" or "Glossian".
The Minister did not say whether the department has any idea of the extent of internal fraud. Does it have figures for internal fraud?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: As the noble Lord said, it is difficult to estimate undetected fraud. I am sure that we have figures to show the amount of internal fraud which we detect. I do not have those figures to hand. I know that our various spotlights have been extremely successful in detecting fraud. Not a great deal of that fraud, but the odd bit of it, will be internal. There was a high profile case recently in London when somebody inside the system was involved in a major fraud which we detected thanks to a diligent member of staff who thought, "Something funny is going on here", and alerted the proper authorities. The matter was pursued in that way. I shall check to see whether we have figures and write to the noble Lord about that.
Lord Carter: I am extremely grateful to the Minister. While he was speaking, I thought about the inspector of taxes who has been sent to prison recently for extensive misbehaviour. I am not sure whether the data checking provided in the Bill would have helped out there.
We thought that the amendments would make the checking more efficient. If data matching exists, why should the department turn its back on it? The Minister said that fraudsters cover their tracks; of course they do. The only slightly worrying point was the point which the Minister made about local authorities. I am sure that the department has all its internal checks and balances working, and one would hope that local authorities would be equally as vigilant.
We have explored the issue. The Minister gave a useful answer, for which I am grateful. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton moved Amendment No. 8:
The noble Baroness said: I am speaking only to Amendment No. 8. The other amendments have been ungrouped as they were grouped incorrectly. The
The Bill as it stands makes it lawful for information to be supplied to any person or any body to whom that other information could be supplied or used for any purpose for which that other information could be used, which as I understand it means that, where data held by the DSS are amended to improve the accuracy of the information, the amended information can be used in the same way as the original information and that it allows, but does not require, the department to inform the supplier of any information if amendments are made. Therefore, does it not follow that much of the information, particularly once it has been data matched and revised, could be spread around and the revised information therefore supplied to all third parties to use as they wish? Does the Minister think that that is appropriate?
The amendment would require that the supplier of the original information be told of any corrections or amendments that are appropriate. For example, a supplier giving information that includes an incorrect address should be told about that error. However, the amendment provides that he should not necessarily be given all the other information that has come to light from other suppliers.
Without being amended, the Bill as it stands means that it would be legal for a supplier to receive irrelevant personal data, and to that extent it removes some of the protection afforded by the fourth data protection principle, which states that personal data:
Allied to that is the concern about who is responsible for the integrity of the data. I presume that it is the department which holds the centralised database. However, a difficulty arises when the same information is being duplicated in different departments. If the information changes in one place, what is the mechanism by which it is changed on different databases in different departments? Who, therefore, has the responsibility for the integrity of the data held by the Department of Social Security and the Inland Revenue?
In addition, I should like clarification of the UK obligations under the Council of Europe Convention Recommendation R(86)1 and I should like to know whether this Bill is in breach of a section of that recommendation. Although the United Kingdom has derogated from parts of paragraphs 1.2, 3.3 and 5 of that recommendation, it has not derogated from paragraph 4.3 which states that,
The Bill is about invading individual privacy in order to combat fraud, but both sides of the equation are important. The fraud should be combated, but privacy should not be invaded by powers which are too wide or which allow for other uses of the data without the statutory guarantees for the protection of the individual. I await with interest the Minister's response. I beg to move.
Earl Russell: This is a good, sensible and helpful amendment which I am happy to support. However, I shall not do so at great length because the noble Baroness has pretty well made all the case and done so extremely well. I should like to add a few words in support of the point about paragraph 4.3 of Recommendation R(86)1 from the Committee of Ministers in the Council of Europe. It is important to point out that, although we have made derogations from some of those recommendations, we have not done so as regards that particular paragraph. I do not know whether the Minister has an answer on the point, but I hope that he will have one in due course before we leave the Bill.
If checking the accuracy of data is a lawful purpose--and I confess that I rather hope it is and that the Minister will find arguments to show that it is--then one ought not to leave a supplier of data with a lot of data which he could have known were inaccurate. Let us say, for example, that we are dealing with a lot of data about the proverbial Mr. Smith, as is very often the case. If the data are about some completely different Mr. Smith, it would be worth putting the matter right. It is rather like certain organisations which send me papers and which believe me to be a certain "Mr. E. Russell". There again, to save confusion, it would be well worth putting such organisations right. If the matching is to be undertaken, is it not worth spreading the light of accuracy and truth a little wider? As I said, I am happy to support the amendment.
Page 2, line 19, leave out from ("for") to end of line 23 and insert ("the supplier of information to be informed of any correction to the information supplied.").
"held for any purpose or purposes should be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to that purpose or those purposes".
"personal data should not be communicated outside the framework of social security for other than social security purposes except with the informed consent of the person concerned or in accordance with other guarantees laid down by domestic law".
That latter point is the crucial one; namely that, if other uses occur, there needs to be guarantees laid down in domestic law. However, there are no statutory
guarantees in this clause offering such protection. Does that mean that it is the Government's intention to derogate from paragraph 4.3, or that they may already have done so, or rather that they choose to ignore the recommendations of the Council of Europe perhaps on the basis that such recommendations are just recommendations?
7 p.m.
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