Over 40 organisations have condemned the DWP’s plans to carry out surveillance on claimants’ bank accounts, warning that they risk a causing a much bigger version of the Horizon Post Office scandal. Meanwhile, the Disability News Service (DNS) has uncovered a chilling example of just how wrong the DWP can get it when they start checking claimants bank accounts.
According to the Guardian this week, 42 organisations including Disability Rights UK, Big Brother Watch, Child Poverty Action Group, Mind and Age UK have written a letter to Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary.
In the letter they stress the dangers involved in the bank surveillance plan, arguing that “There are approximately 22.6 million individuals in the welfare system, including those who are disabled, sick, caregivers, job seekers, and pensioners. They should not be treated like criminals by default … The Horizon scandal saw hundreds of people wrongfully prosecuted using data from faulty software. The government must learn from this mistake – not replicate it en masse.”
Meanwhile, there is a disturbing example on the Disability News Service (DNS) website of how wrong the DWP can get bank surveillance.
The DWP threatened to suspend the benefits of a disabled woman because of bank accounts they wrongly believed belonged to her husband. They claimed that they had information that showed an undeclared ISA savings account and a current account in his name, with his national insurance number, address and date of birth.
The claimant was given just two weeks to prove that the account was not her husband’s or have her benefits suspended. Not surprisingly, the bank refused to supply any details to the husband about any accounts other than his own, because that would have breached data protection law.
You can read the full story on the DNS website.
If the DWP can already get things this wrong, imagine the level of error when they are dealing with many thousands of items of data constantly being forwarded to them by all the UK’s major banks.
