Tag Archives: fraud bill

In Citizen’s Britain Paddy Ashdown argued that despite the Conservative government’s claims of “rolling back the frontiers of the state”, they were in fact spending more and more on social control, coercion, and surveillance. The closing months of Sunak’s government echoed this aspect of the Thatcher era, with it planning to introduce mass surveillance legislation, which now could be implemented under the present Labour government.

The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which the Conservative’s failed to pass before this year’s general election, included surveillance provisions would have forced banks to monitor the accounts of all means-tested benefits claimants, and report every time an account went over the capital limit, or was used abroad for more than four weeks. It would have also empowered designated DWP staff to arrest claimants, search premises and seize any evidence they found without needing to use the police. Such legislation had the potential to create a Horizon-style scandal on a horrific scale, given how DWP software had wrongly flagged over 200,000 people over the last three years for investigation for suspected benefit fraud and error.

Though the details concerning Labour’s Fraud, Error and Debt Bill haven’t been made public recent comments by Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall worryingly indicate people on benefits would be under similar surveillance. The Fraud bill would require banks and other financial institutions to check examine their own data sets to highlight cases of potential benefit fraud, to help the DWP investigate fraud and incorrect payments. Though Kendall made assurances that “only a minimum amount of data will be accessed” and that this would be done in a “legal, proportionate and targeted” manner, groups like Big Brother Watch and Campaign for Disability Justice remain highly sceptical that the government will be so restrained. They have every right to be, given the authoritarian tendencies of the New Labour governments.