The government are pushing for further powers to crackdown on fraudsters, says to employment minister Alison McGovern. Speaking about privacy concerns regarding the new benefit fraud bill, which could give the government new powers to tackle benefit fraud, the labour minister said she 'more than understands why people are distrustful'. Benefit fraudsters could be banned from driving and subject to bank account snooping if they fail to pay back debts. Report by Faragt. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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NewsTranscript
00:00The bill that we're bringing forward today gives us three new sets of powers
00:04which we need to stop benefit fraud in the social security system.
00:08Firstly, working with banks to get the information about where fraud might be,
00:12so asking banks to give us the information about where people have
00:16received Universal Credit or another benefit and where they've got more money
00:21than you're allowed to have. So we'll use that information for human beings to
00:25then investigate to find fraud. Secondly, we need some new powers to seize assets
00:32and that sort of thing. And finally, the backstop powers. In getting the money
00:36back, we need to be able to get it back from people who really don't want to.
00:42We ask people to pay back through the benefit system or through PAYE. But if people are
00:47not eligible for either of those things, then what we need to do is be able to
00:51get that money back from through banks or in extreme cases where people are
00:56really trying to evade working with us to give us the money back, we want to be
01:00able to apply to a court to say stop this person driving until they've paid
01:05the money back. I more than understand why people are distrustful and I've
01:11worked with my own constituents over many years in relation to DWP and other
01:15government departments and I more than understand why that trust issue is there.
01:20That's why in this new legislation we're putting forward a system of
01:24independent oversight so that a person who has nothing to do with the
01:29government will look at everything that we are doing and report on that. It's also
01:34why we've got our own internal checks to make sure that people are treated
01:38properly. But I totally accept what has happened in the past and that's why
01:42we've responded to that as well with the Liz Sayce review of what happened with
01:46carers allowance. As an addition I would say that the government is bringing
01:50forward Hillsborough law which is all about a duty of candour so that if
01:55things go wrong people who are the state, who are part of the
02:00government, should say upfront this is what's gone wrong and I think overall we
02:05are trying to restore trust. That has been a significant problem and we've got
02:10to do more to fix it.