DWP plans to spy on claimants’ bank accounts will pile misery onto disabled people

How would you feel if you had to give £1,000 right now? If I said you’d get nothing in return, and your life would be exactly the same, how would you feel? Now imagine I came back next month, and the month after, year on year on year, how would you feel? 

Well, that’s the reality for millions of disabled people across the UK. According to the charity Scope, disabled households need an additional £1,010 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households. The extra cost of disability is equivalent to 67% of household income after housing costs.  

With this backdrop, the prime minister gave his much-anticipated speech at the Labour Party conference. “Every community” needs “the breathing space, the calm, the control to focus on the little things they love in life, not the anxiety and insecurity we have now,” the PM said. Yet curiously, despite goals that we’d all agree upon, his government has decided to pile the misery onto disabled people. 

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In a speech where he spoke about how “we do need joy”, Keir Starmer announced a new Fraud, Error and Debt Bill, which appears suspiciously similar to the back-challenged proposals made by the last government to allow the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to monitor people’s financial activity without their knowledge. Where is the joy in subjecting disabled people, who are losing thousands a month in extra costs, to more sanctions? 

The proposals will likely cause people to “feel hopeless in a system that appears to be cutting everything even when those in need are struggling to survive.” Stephen Bunbury, associate professor in law at the University of Westminster, told me. 

It goes without saying that this is not the “joy” that the prime minister promised in his speech. In fact, many experts were surprised that a government promising change would bring back Conservative legislation – which proposed giving the DWP powers to trawl those receiving support’s bank accounts and force banks and other third parties to sift through the accounts of the entire population to target welfare recipients for monitoring – despite the proposals being roundly defeated in the last parliament. As Asha Nauth from the Deaf Ethnic Women’s Association described: “Access to information from the Labour party is not good for deaf people… they have brought out the surveillance bill has not been communicated to the deaf community in their language.”  

It is quite shocking that the government is willing to give a department well known for its failure to protect disabled people, like the DWP, new powers to introduce “algorithms” to trawl vast troves of accounts at once. And has yet to discuss it with groups representing many of those at risk. Is this really the best way to roll out new powers where millions will lose our right to privacy?  

Just as worrying are the very high chances of false positive matches for fraud or error. Research by Big Brother Watch found that local authorities are already suspending or terminating the social security support of thousands of people by applying extremely small timeframes for people to respond to algorithmically generated reviews of their entitlements. 

It is extremely concerning that the new powers would also see disabled people and those around us wrongly accused, potentially having our benefits suspended, and be forced into intrusive interviews by DWP fraud investigators. “Being disabled and monitored […] would make me feel like a fraudster and actually make me feel that I do not deserve or make me question whether I am entitled to the benefit”, Stephen explained. 

I spoke to a benefits and entitlement advocate at Stay Safe East, a disabled people’s organisation that supports disabled survivors of abuse who told me how common this feeling is among the community: “Disabled people already get watched more closely than others. These changes could make them feel even more targeted, so they might not claim the benefits they need because they’re worried about being watched.  

Claimants can also become paranoid and lose confidence in their ability to live independently. This may reduce their autonomy, and they may be discouraged from spending the amount of their benefits on necessities.” 

Given the DWP’s well-documented history of negligence, there is a serious risk that claims mistakenly flagged as fraudulent could trigger burdensome appeals processes and the erroneous suspension of benefits. This could easily leave people unable to eat, purchase essential medication or keep a roof over their heads.  

The problems with this bill go far beyond the reach of any new technology – they stem from how those working in Westminster look at our social security system.  

Instead of seeing the social security system as an essential public service – a piece of social infrastructure that ensures we all have access to the right support when needed – they see extra costs that, unlike disabled people, they can avoid paying.  

Their ignorance of the system’s role in disabled people’s lives has left them feeling more comfortable spending millions to create an uncontrollable digital panopticon than spending money to create a system built on respect, dignity and support that enables us to live the lives we deserve.  

Mikey Erhardt is a campaigner at Disability Rights UK.

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