The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) could snoop into millions of benefit claimants’ bank accounts under changes to the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (DPDI). The proposals to look at data received from the 15 most popular UK banks will cost the DWP £370 million to set up and a further £30 million annually once it is fully up and running in 2032, BirminghamLive reports.
The 15 banks selected provide accounts for 97 per cent of the nearly 9 million people who claim benefits. They include Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Halifax, HSBC, NatWest, Santander and TSB. The DWP maintains its new powers do not amount to surveillance and will not give investigators direct access to bank accounts.
A spokesperson said the measures would be targeted at areas where fraud and error is highest, such as Universal Credit. “These changes will not allow DWP direct access to bank accounts, but will require third parties to share data signalling fraud with us so it can be considered further,” they added. “It will also help identify people who have made a genuine mistake with their claim, preventing them from potential debts.”
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It has been suggested that DWP would ask banks for data every four weeks. It could then use artificial intelligence to analyse vast amounts of financial information, THP reports. Banks will be obliged to monitor their customers who are on these benefits, and report to the DWP if an account goes over the capital limit or is used abroad for more than four weeks, Independent Living reported. Those on Universal Credit and PIP are required to inform the DWP if they go on holiday and must continue to keep up their claimant commitments by continuing to search for jobs, even when abroad.
However, the decision has come under fire from politicians and campaigners who have taken issue with the problems the move brings up in terms of privacy and liberty. Labour MP Stephen Timms, speaking in the Commons in November 2023, said the new powers, introduced in clause 34 of the DPDI, would give the government the right to inspect the bank account of anyone who claims a state pension.
He told the Commons: “It will give the Government the right to look into the bank account of every single one of us at some point during our lives, without suspecting that we have ever done anything wrong, and without telling us that they are doing it.”
Silkie Carlo, director for Big Brother Watch, said in November that people who are disabled, sick, carers or looking for work “should not be treated like criminals by default”. “Such proposals do away with the longstanding democratic principle in Britain that state surveillance should follow suspicion rather than vice versa, and it would be dangerous for everyone if the government reverses this presumption of innocence,” she added.
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