The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has released a report on its plans to keep an eye on people’s bank accounts.
The UK’s 15 largest banks are expected to set up alerts on benefit claimants’ accounts under new provisions in the Digital Information and Data Protection Bill.
However, Mel Stride, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has provided those concerned with further information on how the system will work.
People can relax in the knowledge that the Department will no longer be able to review claimants’ prices through account access, he assured them.
On the other hand, he will draw attention to cases where capital limits have been breached or overseas transactions that involve people travelling outside the permitted periods.
It was found that 60,000 people had too much money saved to qualify for benefits, based on a trial of the new measures at one bank.
DWP Targets High Balances and Overseas Claimants
The maximum amount that can be claimed under Universal Credit is £16,000, but the common monthly stability of these bills was £50,000.
Birmingham Live reports that a further 3,000 bills showed warning signs of people who had been living abroad too long to qualify for benefits.
In his presentation to the Work and Pensions Committee, Mr Stride highlighted the impending legislative changes: “There are a couple of things happening. One is a Bill in the next Parliament that will be about the HMRC alignment point.”
There are also amendments that we put through in the DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) digital Bill, which relate to the ability to try to establish the answer to the question that you have asked: How do you know if somebody qualifies for a benefit where qualification may hinge, for example, on the capital that they have in their bank account?
The DWP’s Fight Against Fraud Centres on Data
Data assessment is important to the government’s fight in competition to advantage fraud, in step with Peter Schofield, Permanent Secretary of the DWP. He said that the tax office’s notifications of the claimants’ income are evidence of this.
The Conservative the New Forest West member, Sir Desmond Swayne, declared: “You’re going to employ machine learning and advanced analytics. Because you mentioned who might be making claims when they are not entitled to make them and the signals that would lead to that, I believe the Secretary of State simply hinted that it would be intelligence-led.”
“Decisions about any individual claimant and their circumstances are always made by a human looking at the evidence,” he said in closing. That is the core of everything here, I do want to reassure everyone.
Furthermore, the Conservatives are working on a new Fraud Bill for the next Parliament, which will treat benefit fraud in the same way as tax fraud and give them additional powers to make arrests and seizures.
