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Welfare Reform Bill

I understand that Amendment 137 has been withdrawn, so I shall deal only with Amendments 138 and 139. Amendment 138 would include a specific reference to the abolition of income support in applying benefit fraud sanctions. Although I think I understand why the noble Lord has tabled this amendment, I hope that I can reassure him, as he anticipated, that it is unnecessary. We intend that loss of benefit provision resulting from benefit fraud will continue to be applied to income support cases only until such time that no-one remains in receipt of this benefit. For this reason, Schedule 7 of the Bill covers the required repeals and revocations resulting from the abolition of income support. This updates the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 sections where necessary and addresses the issue that the noble Lord raised. It is clear that a benefit fraud sanction cannot be applied to a non-existent benefit and therefore the amendment is not required. Amendment 139 would change the definition of a post-commencement offence. However, the change suggested by the noble Lord could cause confusion, as a benefit offence has already been defined as any post-commencement offence in new Section 6B(13) of the Bill. The use of the word "criminal" is intended to make it clear that the behaviour constituting the benefit offence is fraud, which is a criminal offence. It is benefit offences which are covered by this definition; they are offences which are criminal offences—that is to say, fraudulent. The fraud sanction that leads to a one-off strike being imposed may be an administrative penalty or caution rather than a conviction in court, but before an alternative sanction can be offered there must be sufficient evidence that the criminal offence of benefit fraud has been committed to consider a prosecution. I hope that that covers the noble Lord’s point and that he will feel able to withdraw the amendment.