HC Deb 01 July 2002 vol 388 cc97-8W
Mr. Willetts

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), of 20 May 2002,Official Report, column 46W, on criminal offences, which offences have been (a) created, (b) abolished and (c) redrafted. [64209]

Malcolm Wicks

Sections 13 and 14 of the Social Security Administration (Fraud) Act 1997 created six new offences (four triable in the Crown court or magistrates court and two offences triable in the magistrates court) by adding new sections 112(1A) and 111A(c) and (d) to the Social Security Administration Act 1992. Section 13 of the Child Support Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 creates three new offences relating to information required to be furnished to a child support officer.

The offences in sections 112A and 111A(c) and (d) were redrafted and substituted for the previous ones by the Social Security (Fraud) Act 2001 because of difficulty in drafting linked regulations sufficiently precisely to be workable. Section 19 of the Social Security (Fraud) Act repeals the previous provisions.

New offences created by the Jobseekers Act 1995 were brought within the scope of the offences in the 1992 Act and the original provisions were consequentially repealed by schedule 1 para 4 and schedule 2 to the 1997 SSA (Fraud) Act.