Ministers have been urged not to resurrect Conservative plans to tackle welfare fraud (Image: Getty)
Privacy campaigners and charities have warned that any move to introduce the mass surveillance of the bank accounts of benefit claimants risks creating a “snoopers charter”.
Ministers have been urged not to resurrect Conservative plans to tackle welfare fraud by launching mass algorithmic surveillance – perhaps using Artificial Intelligence – of bank accounts.
Such a regime would look at all receipts and spending to identify whether people making claims for Universal Credit and other benefits are being honest about their incomes and so help identify and reduce benefit fraud put at £10 billion a year.
Disability rights, poverty, pensioner and privacy groups fear a move in this direction would represent both an enormous intrusion into the private lives of the nation and a “huge blow for privacy in the UK”.
In a letter to the Secretary of State, Liz Kendall, they warned that requiring banks to scan accounts for suspicious behaviour would be a severe “intrusion into the nation’s privacy, with potentially punitive consequences for vulnerable individuals”.
Last week, the government announced a fraud, error and debt bill (Image: Getty)
Last week, the government announced a fraud, error and debt bill to require banks to share data on account holders that “may show indications of potential benefit overpayments”.
The details of how this would be done are yet to be announced, however the says any new surveillance would not give the government itself access to people’s bank accounts.
The new government does not plan to go as far as the Conservatives, at least at this stage. Instead, officials would be able to request data from banks to indicate where a customer may not meet eligibility rules for benefits, and that if there were a signal of fraud or error, a member of staff would always investigate it.
The government is concerned welfare fraud is becoming more sophisticated and without new legal powers it cannot keep pace with the changing nature of fraud to tackle it robustly enough. It believes asking banks to share claimants’ data with the to help it tackle benefit fraud could help save £1.6bn over five years.
Labour’s proposals could compel banks and other third parties to trawl the accounts of the entire population to target welfare recipients for monitoring. However, by its own estimation it would stop only about 3 percent of the total amount lost to fraud and error.
Such mass financial surveillance powers would be “disproportionate”, according to the signatories of the letter to Liz Kendall, which included leaders of Disability Rights UK, Age UK, Privacy International, Child Poverty Action Group and Big Brother Watch.
The letter warns: “Imposing suspicionless algorithmic surveillance on the entire public has the makings of a Horizon-style scandal – with vulnerable people most likely to bear the brunt when these systems go wrong.
“Pensioners, disabled people, and carers shouldn’t have to live in fear of the government prying into their finances.”
The rejected the concerns raised by campaigners, saying: “These claims are false.”
A spokesperson said: “These powers will be used appropriately and proportionately through robust, new oversight and reporting rules, and our staff will be trained to the highest possible standards.
“The information provided by banks is unrelated to algorithms and any signals of potential fraud will always be looked at comprehensively by a member of staff.”