08 January 2024 , 14:22
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The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has announced plans to check accounts with 15 major banks, under new powers.
The DWP says the move, which will cost £370million to set up and £30million a year to run from 2032, is not surveillance and won't give investigators direct access to bank accounts. The UK's top 15 banks - accounting for 97% of accounts used by benefit claimants - include the Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Halifax, HSBC, NatWest, Santander and TSB.
A DWP spokesperson stated that these measures would target areas where fraud and error are highest, like Universal Credit, and added: "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. It will also help identify people who have made a genuine mistake with their claim, preventing them from potential debts."
Silkie Carlo, director for Big Brother Watch, said that folks who are disabled, sick, carers, or looking for work "should not be treated like criminals by default".
She said: "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.
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Labour MP Stephen Timms echoed similar views at a Commons meeting, voicing concern over the new powers. "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," he warned last November.
The plans were first launched in the 2022 policy paper on "Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System" which you can read here. This paper explained how the powers would work and included hypothetical scenarios on how they would be implemented.
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