Critics have hit out at new Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) powers that will reportedly “secretly survey" disabled people's bank accounts.

Campaigners argue that allowing the DWP to “snoop” on benefit claimants' bank accounts would further destroy trust in the UK's biggest public service department.

They spoke out this week against measures in the data protection and digital information bill, which will give DWP powers to force banks to scan all their accounts to find those receiving benefits, and people connected with those accounts.

They will then have to report anyone who triggers what are seen as potential indicators of fraud to DWP.

Over 20 million people across the UK are claiming Universal Credit or at least one benefit from the DWP to help with the additional costs of day-to-day living.

According to DisabilityNewsService.com, these powers would allow the department to see how benefit recipients are spending their money.

The DWP can only request details of a bank account holder’s transactions if there are reasonable suspicions under the current rules.

DWP figures indicate that fraud and error are decreasing in the benefits system after the government restated its determination to drive levels down further and protect taxpayers’ money.

Opposition to the new powers is growing, with a petition set up by a disabled woman having secured nearly 80,000 signatures.

The woman is known only as Mandy, and said the threatened new powers had left her anxious and worried about “what the DWP will be allowed to do with the information they gain from scrutinising our bank accounts”.

She said: “I fear that if they do not approve of my spending, that they will take my benefits away, or will cut it when they see I am able to save a little, because they’re giving me more than just the ‘necessaries’.”

Mandy receives personal independence payments and is in the employment and support allowance support group

She said: “Genuine claimants should have nothing to fear from the DWP. But we are kept in a constant state of anxiety because the system wants us that way.

“We are dragged in for assessments, we are expected to fill in reams and reams of paperwork, we have to fight and fight for what we are, by law, entitled to.

“This further intrusion into our privacy, when we are already struggling with the effects of our disabilities, is cruel and unnecessary.”

Disabled people’s organisations are working with the civil liberties campaign organisation Big Brother Watch to fight the government’s proposals.

Big Brother Watch has warned that the potential for “expansive surveillance, high rates of error, and disproportionate impact on people in vulnerable positions is huge”.

It says that this “level of financial intrusion and monitoring affecting millions of people is highly likely to result in serious mistakes and sets an incredibly dangerous precedent”, and it has described it as “a frightening level of government overreach”.

It says the new powers “would put some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people on trial through intrusive bank surveillance”.

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “Disabled people shouldn’t be treated like criminals and have every single expenditure they make monitored by DWP, although many of us are used to having to justify direct payments spending every few months to social services.

Recommended reading: 

DWP: 8 million homes issued £299 Cost of Living update

DWP: Two month warning for PIP & other benefits claimants

DWP to pay £407 to anyone with one of these 52 conditions

“It seems to me that many MPs are much more likely than disabled people to commit fraud and have unacceptable spending habits of taxpayers’ money, so if they want to see our spending, we say, show us yours too.”

Ken Butler, welfare rights and policy adviser for Disability Rights UK, said: “The widespread nature of the bill’s snooping powers are very concerning.

“The responsibility for undertaking catch-all data searches will be in the hands of unaccountable private banks and building societies.

“The search criteria are likely being drawn up by automated and secret algorithms with the concern that inherent bias could result in disabled people being disproportionately targeted.

“All this happened without any prior ‘evidence’ that any of those then targeted may have been engaged in fraud.

“Most disability benefit fraud allegations are false and the level of such fraud itself is minuscule.

“But there now is a danger that being caught up in any subsequent artificial intelligence investigations could result in mental distress and physical harm of disabled claimants.

“The DWP has repeatedly acknowledged in recent years that it badly needs to build the trust of benefit claimants"

“Secret surveillance of their bank accounts with no cause is a way to destroy this.”

Labour’s Sir Stephen Timms, who chairs the Commons Work and Pensions committee, said during the last debate on the bill, in November: “As we have been reminded, the state has long had powers where there were grounds for suspecting that benefit fraud had been committed.

“The proposal in the bill is for surveillance where there is absolutely no suspicion at all, which is a substantial expansion of the state’s powers to intrude.”

He added: “The amendment gives the government extremely broad powers, with no checks in place, and it has been done in a way that minimises parliamentary scrutiny of what is proposed.”

The SNP’s Patrick Grady said there was “a good chance that minority groups or people with protected characteristics will find themselves most at risk of those checks and of coming under the proactive suspicion of the DWP”.