Privacy activist group Big Brother Watch has questioned the legality of the plan for Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to run checks on the financial data of benefits claimants.
DWP has said the organisation’s claims are false and emphasised the intent to use the powers to reduce benefits fraud.
The plan was announced as an amendment to the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill in November of last year.
It would enable the department to scan customers’ accounts for benefits such as the state pension and tax credits, then require banks to send matching account information without the individual’s knowledge.
Big Brother Watch said it has commissioned legal advice from barristers Dan Squires KC and Aidan Wills of Matrix Chamber, and that this was that it would amount to “an unprecedented regime of intrusive generalised financial surveillance across the population, not restrict6ed to serious crime at all”.
It also raised questions about the levels of legal safeguarding and oversight in the new powers.
Not within the law
“In the absence of these safeguards, it is difficult to see how the exercise of this power could ever be in accordance with the law,” it said.
The plan is due to be debated in the House of Lords next week as part of the committee stage of the bill. Big Brother Watch said that amendments have been tabled to remove the new powers.
Silkie Carlo, the organisation’s director of civil liberties, said: “These powers are a disaster for financial privacy and the presumption of innocence, and could lead to Horizon style injustice on steroids. It is breathtaking that a Conservative government is so recklessly creating Big Brother style spying powers to intrude on the population’s bank accounts.
“Everyone wants fraudulent uses of public money to be dealt with, and the Government already has powers to review the bank statements of suspects. However, this is a completely unprecedented regime of intrusive generalised financial surveillance across the population, not restricted to serious crime or even crime at all.
“The legal advice is clear that the bank spying powers seriously risk Britons’ privacy rights. We urge the government to go back to the drawing board and scrap these Orwellian powers.”
Cruel and dangerous
Baroness Kidron, former director of civil liberties group Liberty, described the powers as “cruel, dangerous and disproportionate” and that they are focused on poor people.
“Cruel,” she said, “because they put the most vulnerable in society in a situation where family, landlords and employers will withdraw support to protect their own ‘connected accounts’ which will be open for scrutiny.
“Dangerous because we have seen how digital systems, such as Horizon, can easily provide false signals.
“Disproportionate because the DWP has powers to get this information if they suspect wrongdoing. This is a phishing exercise at eyewatering scale, its presence in a Data Protection Bill is contradictory to the bill’s stated purpose.”
'Claims are false'
In response, a DWP spokesperson said: “Big Brother Watch’s claims that DWP will use these measures to reveal information about people’s movements, opinions, and medical information are entirely false. The Government remains committed to these powers as a method of reducing fraud and error in the benefits system, which will save the taxpayer £600 million over the next five years.
“These measures will require third parties to provide only limited, relevant information that may signal whether benefits are being improperly paid. It does not give DWP access to anyone’s bank account or see how claimants are spending their money.”
