KESS - Addressing Fraud & Benefit Error

Parliament Buildings – Long Gallery

1.30pm: RaISe Researcher – Welcome
1.35pm: Assembly Committee Chair – Opening Remarks

Professor Gráinne McKeever, Social Justice Institute, School of Law, Ulster University

Recent legislative activity in Great Britain (GB) and Northern Ireland (NI) aims to respond to increasingly sophisticated forms of fraud – a legitimate aim that is in the public interest. Among those attempts are GB’s Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Act 2025 (GB 2025 Act) and the proposed Public Authorities Fraud and Error Bill (NI Bill). Past legislative experience in Northern Ireland suggests the proposed NI Bill could mirror the GB 2025 Act, following the convention of social security parity under prevailing devolution arrangements. Naturally, any such attempts must strike a lawful balance of the competing interests – that is, introduce statutory measures addressing fraud, but not enabling unlawful state interference with the legitimate interests of benefit claimants and others, which could allow state intrusion and discrimination. This seminar presentation discusses the proposed NI Bill, while drawing on the GB 2025 Act experience.

It first explains the context for the proposed NI Bill: how the Social Security Administration (Fraud) (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 (and equivalent Act in Britain) created specific provisions for detecting, punishing and prosecuting social security fraud, amending the Social Security Administration (Northern Ireland) Act 1992 which defines social security fraud as a criminal offence. The 1997 Order increased data matching powers for detecting fraud and created new administrative penalties as an alternative to criminal prosecution. The trajectory of legislation dealing with fraud since then – most notably under the Welfare Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 2015 – continued that pattern of expanding data matching powers and creating new penalties as punishments to reduce prosecution of low-level frauds in court.

When introducing the Bill for the GB 2025 Act, the Labour Government explained that its Bill was not a replica of the previous (Conservative) Government’s controversial Data Protection and Digital Information Bill 2023-24, which fell due to the dissolution of the United Kingdom (UK) Parliament. However, the GB 2025 Act provides similarly extensive new data matching provisions. It creates statutory duties on employers and banks to comply with data processing to verify benefit eligibility, even where there is no suspicion of fraud. This necessitates unprecedented surveillance of claimants and those who may be linked to them, including carers, appointees and landlords.

Given the GB 2025 Act experience and the pattern of maintaining social security parity in NI, this presentation highlights issues arising from the GB 2025 Act’s data-matching provisions – the extent and oversight of those proposed powers – as they could be specified in the proposed NI Bill. For example, the 2025 Act requires a statutory Code of Practice to guide data processors and investigators and ensure their behaviour under the Act is proportionate. The UK Parliament did not have sight of such a Code when deliberating on the GB Bill. A draft of that Code now is available and could inform Assembly considerations when addressing the proposed NI Bill and any such comparable Code – such as how the NI Bill and any NI statutory Code provisions could afford due process and specify appeal rights.

It also considers the NI Bill’s proposed specified definitions and whether any of its proposed safeguards on suspicion, vulnerability, affordability, hardship, eligibility, collateral damage and responses to fraud vs error would be adequate and proportionate.

The range of insights shared at this seminar will be helpful to both to those developing the Bill, as well as those scrutinising it – if the Bill would be introduced and enacted as proposed.

2.05pm: Discussion
2.35pm: RaISe Researcher – Closing
2.40pm: Networking & Refreshments