Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2)

Clauses 1 and 2 in the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) of course refer to the title and the commencement date. These clauses are often debated in a lively fashion, and members suggest alternative titles and perhaps, in some cases, that the legislation should never come into effect. I do not intend to debate the timing around this bill, because although we disagree with the introduction of the “Henry VIII” clause, we in principle support the introduction of a fairer means of collecting. As my colleague Andrew Little has alluded to, the attempt to make sure that all types of income are more fairly measured when repayments are made is something that we will support. I do, however, have a few suggested changes to the title so as to more fairly reflect some of what happens in the bill, and I put them forward as suggestions.

The first is that this bill could be called the “Fingers Crossed We Can Implement It Bill”, because this is a bill that makes very clear and lays asunder the challenges that the Inland Revenue Department is facing in terms of implementing legislation because of its decrepit computer system. The computer system at the Inland Revenue Department, as we know, is 20 years old and the department has over 1 million returns that remain unprocessed and over $7 billion in outstanding tax. Those things all hint rather loudly at a computer system that is struggling and needs to be updated, and we have a Government that seems to have been very reluctant to actually lay out a timetable and a credible plan for replacing this system, despite not being the only country in the Western World that needs a functioning tax system. This Government has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to bringing the tax system up to date so that we can support the schools, hospitals, and other things that are done through a fully functioning tax system. So my first suggested title is the “Fingers Crossed We Can Implement It Bill”.

If I read from the description at the start of the bill, we can see very clearly that the provision for the relief of small amounts of loan obligations is needing to be adjusted: “Under the Student Loan Scheme Act 1992, repayment obligations under $20 were not collected and were written off. The 2011 Act changed this so that small amounts remain part of a borrower’s loan balance, for future collection.” This was one of the changes this Government brought in.

Now that the scheme will continue to be administered under the Inland Revenue Department’s current computer system, it has been decided that it is not cost-effective to go down that path, and so this bill reinstates the discretion to write off small obligations under $20. So we have a perfectly good provision that has been there for years, then the Government says: “Right, we’ll update it. We’ll make it a bit more modern.” Then it decides: “Well, actually, we have got a fair way down the track and we can’t do it.” The computer system simply will not cope with this little change, it is not cost-effective to do it, and so this bill, aside from introducing those fairness components, is also covering up a whole lot of humiliating back-downs that have slipped in there for things that this computer system cannot implement. The bill itself is a vehicle for getting all of those changes back through that amend—or repeal—decisions made by the Government previously.

💬 David Bennett: What about those overseas bank accounts?

Mr Bennett down the back is interjecting, but I cannot hear what he is saying, so I shall ignore him—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: You haven’t missed a thing.

My colleague tells me I have not missed a thing.

My second title that I would suggest is that this is the “Small Steps Towards Fairness Bill” covering over these humiliating back-downs, because more generally there are more back-downs in this bill. In fact, most—well, not most but a good half; no, actually a majority—of the explanatory material in the front of this bill is about other back-downs and reprioritisations as a result of changes not being able to be implemented.

So this bill recognises “that some of the changes to the administration of the … scheme originally provided for in the Student Loan Scheme Act 2011 would be too complicated to implement within the Inland Revenue Department’s current computer system, and should therefore not proceed.” So this is the material that explains the remaining humiliating back-downs that are in there. It introduces four measures that are provided for in the 2011 Act that should be cancelled. I have already covered the relief for small amounts of loan obligations. In there as well is the loan interest calculation method, which becomes problematic and must be adjusted. It says that the bill as it was introduced, with clause 54, would change the interest calculation method in two ways, effective from 1 April 2013. This then suggests, by way of amendments, that clause 54 is removed from the bill to retain the existing loan interest regime and it also makes related amendments.

There is also the payment calculation—“the removal of clause 59 in the bill as introduced in order to retain the existing way in which payments are allocated to repayment obligations and debt.” Again, it was too complex to administer. Then further on there are some amendments that line up adjusted net income so that it is broadly aligned with the definition of income under Working for Families tax credits.

Finally, the other suggested title that I might recommend is the “Student Loan Tsar-creation Amendment Bill”, because this bill introduces a “Henry VIII” clause, for goodness’ sake, to manage future changes should there be more embarrassing back-downs required. So in future when these kinds of embarrassing back-downs that I have just listed come up the Government has a provision in this legislation so it does not need to bring them back to Parliament. When the computer system cannot implement them, the Government, behind the scenes, can change the regulations and say: “Well, it was roughly in line with what we were intending to do. No need to put this out to the public. We realised that we can’t do it, because we haven’t yet committed to building a proper tax system, a proper tax computer system. We’re still struggling along with the old one. We’re not doing our job very well, and we will at some stage announce some changes, but we haven’t got around to it yet and so on we go. We’ll give it a go, but actually we need these tsar-like powers in case we can’t actually manage it.”

This is an embarrassing bill for the Government in the sense that it has had to bring about a bill that, although it has some useful data-matching principles in it and some useful broadening of the definition of income, really, it is a vehicle by and large for a number of embarrassing back-downs. So these other suggested titles are up there for consideration. I guess I am not putting any false modesty up there when I say it is unlikely these titles will get adopted, but I think that they illustrate some of the limitations in this bill and some of the limitations in this Government’s thinking. We really do need as a country a functioning tax system. We need to get past the situation we have where in the last GST period in the middle of the last year, 70,000 phone calls went unanswered at the Inland Revenue Department, where $7 billion in tax revenue—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Very narrow.

I come back to the title. One of the suggested titles is the “Humiliating Back-down Bill” and I put it to you that really there is a humiliating situation at the Inland Revenue Department, which is caused by the inadequacy of this computer system. That is the point that I am making, because right now that department is unable to do its job properly, and it is actually to do with the lack of Government planning around replacement of this computer system. It is no small beer—we are talking $1 billion here in terms of replacement cost—and we have not yet seen from this Government a credible plan to replace that tax system and no time line. This Government is sitting on its hands. John Key has talked about it over eons, we have seen no action, and it is typical of a Government that has taken its eye off the ball and its hands off the wheel, and the economy in New Zealand is suffering.

Fortuitous—a spontaneous eruption in support of this bill, the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). The title and commencement debate is an opportunity for us to summarise the key themes of the bill—

💬 David Bennett: Don’t rate yourself too much, mate. You only had eight vote for you. Even Kevin Rudd had more vote for him.

It is not a dairy farming bill, Mr Bennett. You can go back to sleep, thank you very much.

This is a bill that the Labour Opposition supports for two reasons. Firstly, it does take some small steps—some would say baby steps—towards ironing out some creases on the equity side of the student loan scheme. Predominantly, it broadens the definition of income to include income from trusts, companies, superannuation schemes, and other forms of income so that net income rather than gross, narrow income is the basis for calculating entitlements, and that is the discussion that we have had in the previous part—Part 3.

Secondly, what it does, as we have discussed earlier, is allow information sharing between the Customs Service and the Inland Revenue Department so that the Inland Revenue Department can access the contact details of overseas-based borrowers who are in serious default. And that brings us to a very sobering truth. National campaigned on a brighter future. Remember those big posters—“Kiss goodbye to higher taxes, not your loved ones.”? That was probably before the car-park tax and the iPad tax and a few other barking mad taxes. What have we seen? We have seen a gross—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

—narrowing of the scope of the debate to the commencement date and title of the bill, which, of course, is the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2), in fact.

We are in the Committee stage, summing up the debate on that point by reminding listeners that this bill could be said to be the “Fiddling While Rome Burns Student Loan Amendment Bill”. We have over $2.5 billion in accumulated student loan debt, and this bill, over a period of—wait for it—4 or 5 years, changes the balance by $7 million. How typical of the National Government—that relaxed Key “do nothing” Government. We have got a $2.5 billion problem and the Government can muster the courage, signalling to address $7 million over 5 years. That is $1 million a year in the face of a $2,500 million problem. Whoopee, whoopee! But at least it is sensible. That is why we are supporting it—at least it is sensible.

The fact is that the people who receive income from a trust or a company should count that as income for the purposes of their student loan repayments—that is the only fair thing. Although Labour has supported many efforts to improve the repayment of debt from overseas-based borrowers, we do not support the Government’s last major change, which was to cut the repayment holiday for overseas borrowers from 3 years to 1 year. We do support, on the other hand, the removal of the 10 percent bonus for quick repayments, because, of course, that was—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not in the bill.

Yes, it is in Part 3, which is covered by the—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No. Just concentrate on what is in the bill. That is not part of the bill.

Part 3 is not part of the bill?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, we have done Part 3.

We have done Part 3, exactly.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We are on the peroration, clauses 1 and 2.

So taking the time on the title and commencement clauses as an opportunity to sum those themes up, we could call this bill the “Student Loan Scheme Amendment (Removal of Silver Spoon Bonus Repayments) Bill”. That would, of course, satisfy that rule that we are able to sum up the key themes of the bill in the title. In so doing, we are recognising that the 10 percent fast repayment bonus really was unnecessary, and it really benefited only those who did not need to be benefited because they were already able to repay more quickly and thus have an outstanding balance for less time.

There are all sorts of other problems with the bill. If we look at this bill, perhaps we might call it the “Student Loan Amendment (Unfinished Business) Bill”, because we have these weird paradoxes that the Government has not touched—in fact, that it is responsible for—like you cannot have a student loan for postgraduate study. What do they think? How are people going to do postgraduate study? Or are the only people worthy of getting PhDs the trust-fund babies? Where does that come from? I mean, what is the rationale for that?

💬 Hon Maryan Street: What happens to the health system?

What happens to the health system, as the Hon Maryan Street has just asked. How are people supposed to get postgraduate tertiary medical qualifications? [Bell rung] Mr Chair.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The Hon David Cunliffe.

Thank you, Mr Chairman, for the very generous and not altogether foreseen opportunity to extend the debate on the title and commencement clauses, but a very welcome one. I shall probably take only another two or three calls on this matter.

Over-55-year-olds were stopped from accessing student loans in Budget 2011. That was disgraceful. Part-time students can no longer borrow from the student loan scheme for course-related costs as of Budget 2010. This is kind of a litany of penny-pinching, is it not? Budget 2010—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Those things are not in the bill. I just ask the member to focus on what is in the bill.

The bill, of course, is contextualised by the changes that came before, but I do take your point. Thus I suggested that the title of the bill be the “Student Loan Amendment (Unfinished Business) Bill”, and that is some of the business that is unfinished. Budget 2012 froze the student loan parental income threshold, and that is part of the reason we are back again in this bill to broaden the definition of income, as we are here today.

In the previous part we looked at a number of technical amendments. We could also call this bill the “Student Loan (Technical Amendment, Hard to Understand) Bill”. It is very important that members of Parliament do cast their eyes over so-called technical amendments, because it has been known in the “Sir Humphrey rule book” that some of the most intriguing and long-lasting changes are smuggled through as a mere change of a comma, the addition of a plus or minus sign, or the word “not” before a sentence. Those technical amendments can often make quite a big difference—changing the decimal place on a tax rate, for example, might make quite a big difference, depending on one’s income stratum. So it is important that we bear in mind the technical detail in a bill like this

Summing up in terms of the title and commencement clause, the title “Student Loan Scheme (Missed Opportunity) Amendment Bill” touches on two small changes: the broadening of the definition of income, and the allowing of information sharing. They are good as far as they go, but the bottom line is we have got a $2.5 billion debt problem. At the same time we have got a whole bunch of people who cannot access student loans. The rigidity of the scheme is creaking under its own weight, and in the face of such significant problems the Government has seen fit to tweak only two definitional aspects.

One would have thought that a title for this bill might be the “Student Loan Scheme (Everything in the Garden is Bloody Near Rosy) Bill”, but it is not. Everything in the country is not nearly rosy, because we have got 270,000 children growing up in poverty, hundreds of thousands of people unemployed, a sluggish recovery—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

—the worst economic record in 51 years, and it is time I sat down.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I think so.

Thank you very much for the chance to speak to the title and commencement clauses of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2).

As my colleagues David Clark and David Cunliffe have both chosen to do during their contributions to this title and commencement clauses debate, I have chosen a number of alternative titles for this bill. I wanted to offer up one: the “Student Loan Scheme (Can We Trust This Government With Our Information?) Amendment Bill”. If I can, I would like to just paint a picture as to why I think that should be the alternative title for this bill.

Turning to clause 34 in Part 1, which looks to amend section 208 of the parent legislation, it says “The purpose of this section is to facilitate the exchange of information between the Inland Revenue Department”—and I will come back to that soon—“and the New Zealand Customs Service for the purpose of establishing an information-matching programme to assist the Commissioner …” to do a number of things. Those things are offered in clause 34 of the bill. They are to: “(a) verify whether borrowers are New Zealand-based or overseas-based; and (b) verify whether borrowers are New Zealand residents; and (c) locate, when they enter or leave New Zealand, borrowers who are in serious default (within the meaning of … the Customs and Excise Act 1996) in relation to student loans.”

I would suggest to this Committee and to the people at home that a lot of that information would be very sensitive information—information that you would not want to necessarily see go flying into the hands of people either who do not have the need to have it or whom you certainly would not want to have it if they had other agendas for using that information. I do think that we should consider looking at an alternative title to this bill for those reasons, because of the track record of this Government around the security of very sensitive information.

This week we have seen a rather large case around the security of information, which is sensitive information that we are looking at here. So we want to make sure that within the bounds of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) and clause 34 that that information is held very tightly, because we have seen 83,000 pieces of information for a large number of quake claimants in Christchurch getting into the wrong hands. Again, we would want to see some safeguards in this bill to make sure that did not happen again.

Also, in respect of the Inland Revenue Department, which, I say again, I quoted as one of the parties here for the information exchange in clause 34, it has had an incidence where, I believe—and I am looking at David Clark here for some guidance—around 6,300 individuals were caught up in another improper release of private information. That is pertinent to clause 34, because we are talking about an agency within this bill that has been given the right to exchange information with another Government agency. We need to be sure around the security of the information that we are talking about in clause 34, because we have had a past transgression—6,300 individuals concerned. We need to be sure there is some security put in place, I guess, at an operational level around this legislation to ensure that that does not happen again. So we do have the Inland Revenue Department involved directly in clause 34. I think that because it has had some past history of an incident, we need to make sure.

Maybe it is a question I can put to the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Immigration—whether he knows what kinds of safeguards are being put in place to govern the operation of clause 34 in this bill, and what kinds of safeguards there will be around that private information.

We have also had the Accident Compensation Corporation and the Ministry of Social Development caught up in very large privacy breaches—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not in the bill.

Yes, and I certainly would not want to see this happen with this student loan scheme bill, because there are 101,000 New Zealanders who have got student loans. A lot of them are overseas, but a lot of them are here in New Zealand. If we were to see a large privacy breach of that scale concerning 101,000 New Zealanders—and I am one of them, I am still paying my student loan back—I would be very upset, as a citizen of this country and as someone who does not want their private information put out there. So it is a serious question to the Minister in the chair as to what safeguards have been put in place to govern clause 34 of this bill. If the Minister in the chair could afford me an opportunity to answer that, I would very much appreciate that as a citizen and as a member of Parliament. Around that, I guess that is where the alternative title “Student Loan Scheme (Can I Trust This Government With My Private Information?) Amendment Bill” does come through.

Another alternative title to this bill would be the “Student Loan Scheme (A Glimmer of Hope With This Government) Amendment Bill”, because Part 3, I think it is, of this bill does open up the bill to change the definition of income to ensure there is a principle of fairness that applies to this bill, with measures to expand the definition of what income is. So as opposed to just a general old PAYE, or whatever you get paid in your contractor’s terms, this provision will expand the definition of income to include people who receive their money from a company, a trust, a superannuation scheme, or other source, which should be treated in the same way as those who earn a weekly wage.

I guess in terms of that alternative title there is a glimmer of hope that there may be a principle of fairness on the other side of the House, because they are applying it to this bill. As Andrew Little said in his, I think it was Part 3, speech on this bill, there is a sense that the student loan scheme levels the playing field for New Zealanders to let all people, regardless of their level of income, to be able to get a tertiary education. That is a very fair system. Of course everyone has to pay the money back, and what this bill is about is making sure we can be much more efficient with that.

What has not been fair in the past has been when people who have been able to manipulate their earnings, whether they are in a trust, or a company, or through their superannuation scheme, or through any other source of information, have not necessarily been pulling their weight to pay their fair share of their income—which is what is contained in this bill—to repay their student loan. I think in that respect this does close a number of small loopholes in the scheme, which on this side we are very happy to see. Because of that, I think there is an alternative title to this bill of “Student Loan Scheme (A Glimmer of Fairness From The National Party) Amendment Bill”.

Can I just—and I do not want to try the Chair too much—go back to the privacy issue, because there were quite a number of submissions to the Finance and Expenditure Committee around that. One of them came from an organisation within my electorate of Mana, the Whitireia Community Law Centre, which did make a very strong submission against clause 34, the use of the exchange of private information and data matching. Can I take the opportunity to speak to that, because in its submission to the select committee it did point out very strong opposition to that data matching, because it did have reservations with that aspect of the bill. In particular it said: “… we are concerned about the potential breach of privacy over an individual’s personal information where data matching occurs.”

If I can just carry on to another part of the bill, where on point eight of the submission it said: “The Law Centre acknowledges that there are benefits to Government Departments sharing information, however, the more information that is shared leads to greater risks around an individual’s civil liberties and the reason for the information being provided by an individual.” So although the Chair might have been pulling me up in terms of going, maybe, outside the scope of some of those instances with the other agencies, there is genuine concern out there in the community because of what has happened in the past around the security of the information that is contained in clause 34, around that exchange of information between the Inland Revenue Department and the New Zealand Customs Service.

So I do reiterate my request to the Minister in the chair, given the recent events and given the historical events around the exchange of information, whether he can give us some kind of indication of what the Minister or the departments are doing around the security of information, which I think is a very topical issue at the moment given what has happened at the Earthquake Commission.

I am pleased to take a call on Part 1 of this legislation, the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2), in regard to the title. If we note that the title—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We are on the clauses, not the—

Sorry, clause 1—clause 1 of this bill, in terms of the title, the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). In particular, I want to talk to the “No 2” aspect of this title of the legislation. Of course, what we have before us is a piece of legislation that is putting in some consequential amendments to the legislation that was passed last year, amending the Student Loan Scheme Act. Our concern here is that this is a Government that is having to come back and continually amend this legislation. In fact, we have seen that the Minister of Revenue has lodged a number of amendments to this legislation, which we are debating tonight in this Committee because they were picked up as we went through. What we think is that there is a certain amount of uncertainty in terms of what is trying to be achieved.

What we saw throughout the submission process, in relation to this concern around the very piecemeal way in which this Government was operating in regard to student support, is very much encapsulated in the title of this bill that we currently have before us, in that it is titled “No 2”, and we are coming back only a year later for a second bite at this cherry, as it were, to try to get this right. We support, in the main, the amendments that are being put forward in terms of the redefinition of income and the data matching, with the reservations that my colleague Kris Faafoi and others have outlined tonight. Although we do support that we do have a concern about the piecemeal way in which this Government is approaching the issue of student support. The fact is that this is the second piece, that this is the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2), and that we are here debating the scheme only a year later. My colleague David Cunliffe has talked about the fact that within the consequential amendments we are seeing in this No. 2 bill there can be a lot of change that is occurring. More alarming—and my colleague Dr David Clark has talked about this tonight, and indeed he has talked about it many times when this bill has been discussed at the Finance and Expenditure Committee and when we have debated this bill in the Chamber—is the “Henry VIII” clause, which is the ability that the Government is giving itself to make amendments if it is seen to be within the spirit of the Act. We do have concerns about that. What we want to see is a Government that is going to get it right, that is not going to take a very piecemeal approach to the very real issue of student support, and that will not come back. We do not want to be debating the “Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3)” in only a few months’ time.

My colleagues have put forward a number of alternative titles for this bill. I think they are very colourful titles, some with a bit more character than Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). If we have a look, we have talked about the “Little Bit Fairer Bill”. Kris Faafoi had a similar theme, but called it the “Glimmer of Hope Bill”. What we see is that this is a bill that is a little bit fairer. I think either of those titles would be very fitting titles for this, rather than Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2), in terms of clause 1. What we see is that this is a little bit fairer. It does redefine those incomes, but it does nothing to address the fact that this is a Government with an explicit agenda to dampen down demand for tertiary education in this country. Student loans are meant to be about giving access to education to students, not taking it away. Our concern is that this is the policy agenda that this Government has been going with, so we would suggest that either the “Little Bit Fairer Bill” or the “Glimmer Of Hope Bill” that my colleagues have suggested would be better titles for this bill. I think they are very, very good suggestions. Treasury estimates that 25,000 New Zealanders have lost access to student loans due to the cumulative effects of Budget 2010, Budget 2011, and what this Budget has delivered. That is why we think a name like “Little Bit Fairer Bill” is appropriate, because really what we are doing on one hand by making the assessment of income a lot fairer does not offset some of the very unfair things that this Government has done in relation to student support. So I think that is one very good suggestion that has been put through by my colleagues.

The other that I would like to suggest is the “Tinkering Around The Edges Bill”, because I think that is one that picks up some of the aspects of this bill. Although there is nothing that we really disagree with in terms of what the Government is putting through here, in that it is making it a fairer scheme and is doing things to increase that, it is not doing anything to holistically address the issue of student support. That is where Labour wants to see things go. We want to see students supported. We do not want to dampen down demand for education as a necessary policy objective. We think that people having access to tertiary training, whether that be skills training or the ability to learn a trade, to go to university, or to a whole raft of different tertiary education courses, is a good thing. We do not want to have an explicit policy agenda to dissuade our young New Zealanders from accessing this. So that is why we think it could be the “Tinkering Around the Edges Bill”.

When you put this bill in the context of the other things this Government has done over the course of this term, the title “Tinkering Around the Edges Bill” makes a whole lot more sense. It makes sense if you put it in the context of the Government limiting postgraduate students’ access to the student allowance, and the fact that this is not a Government that wants to encourage postgraduate study. On this side of the Chamber we think it is something we should be committed to, and it is certainly something that we see as vital to our future both as a society and as an economy, and it is something we will seek to encourage. We also see that this is a Government that has limited access to student loans to those aged over 55. Given the high levels of unemployment that we have in this country, which this Government does not seem to have any answers for or any plan for, we do not think it is good to limit people aged over 55 from having the opportunity to retrain and pick up some new skills. That is why we think clause 1 would be better amended to read the “Tinkering Around the Edges Bill”.

My colleague David Clark has gone through some other suggestions, and one of his favourites, I think, was the “Embarrassing Back-down Bill”. This bill is something we have had to come back to, and I spoke about this earlier when I spoke about the specific reference to the “No 2” part of the title of this bill. It should be called the “Embarrassing Back-down Bill”, because it is something the Government has had to come back and correct over and over and over when it comes to the issue of student support. We need to get this right. We need to look at the whole issue holistically.

My colleague Kris Faafoi made a very good contribution, I thought. I particularly liked his suggestion that the title should be the “Can We Trust this Government with Our Information Bill”. I think there are some real concerns. As someone, like my colleague Kris Faafoi, who has a student loan, I have concerns about what the Government might do with the information it holds on me in relation to my student loan and whether or not that information is safe. I have presumably just had my information about my Earthquake Commission repairs revealed to the world, so I would not like to see this. That is why we think the “Can We Trust this Government with Our Information Bill” is a much better name. This is a Government that has shown that it really is not to be trusted with the information and data of many of the citizens of this nation. Indeed, what was spoken about was the very agency that is named in this bill, the Inland Revenue Department. We have already seen that there have been problems with the way in which the Government holds information in the Inland Revenue Department. We have had problems with 6,300 people’s information in that very agency, and that is why my colleague Kris Faafoi’s suggestion of the “Can We Trust the Government with Our Information Bill” is a very, very good one.

One other thing I would like to throw in there is that the “We Don’t Want Another Novopay Debacle Bill” could be another suggestion for what this bill could be called, because what we see in the officials’ report to the select committee is an acknowledgment that the computer systems are just not going to be up to it. They are not going to be able to put the systems in place. We have a section in the officials’ report here that says: “Because of the complexity of the student loan system, the detailed analysis has identified that the systems design, development and testing required to implement some of the 1 April 2013 changes is significantly greater than originally expected. To ensure timely delivery of the core Government policies contained in the 2011 Act, and the policies that have the greatest benefit for borrowers, it is proposed to not proceed with some of the measures in the 2011 Act.”

Here we have a Government that knows it is under the gun and has seen the muck-up that it has already done in education in terms of Novopay and the fact that teachers in this country are not being paid. So we think that changing the title to “We Don’t Want Another Novopay Debacle Bill” would be another good amendment to clause 1 of this legislation, rather than using the rather bland name that it has been given, the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). We see that the officials’ advice actually shows that this is a Government that not only is incapable of protecting our data but also is incapable of dealing with data and putting systems in place in order to deal with large numbers of data like that. So Labour does support this bill, but—

I move, That the question be now put.