Labour wants to spy on your bank accounts

Whether in his clampdowns on free speech or the planned expansion of facial-recognition surveillance, Keir Starmer has already shown his authoritarian streak in the short time he has been UK prime minister. Now, the new Labour government has revealed its plans to revive powers to spy on citizens’ bank accounts – an outrageous policy that the party resisted in opposition, only to brazenly reintroduce it now it is in government.

Announced towards the end of last month, this policy is being promoted as an attempt to crack down on welfare fraud. But the measures would require banks to monitor everyone’s bank accounts. This would open the door to mass surveillance and treat millions of innocent people like suspects.

This ‘surveillance first, ask questions later’ approach to privacy will force banks to monitor everyone’s accounts to find those connected to welfare payments – including pensioners, parents and landlords. All our finances would be scrutinised by the banks as they look for ‘signals’ of fraud or error to report to the authorities. It’s a sweeping, intrusive plan that treats ordinary people as guilty until proven innocent. Instead of focussing on actual fraudsters, this blanket surveillance will drag the most vulnerable into a web of suspicion. The privacy of millions would be destroyed.

Worse still, the plans will place some of the most vulnerable people in the country at the highest risk. There are around 22.6million people in the welfare system. Many are disabled, sick, caregivers and / or pensioners. When these automated surveillance systems fail or produce mistakes, it will be those on the breadline who will be hit the hardest.

There are already countless examples of how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) gets it wrong. It has falsely accused a single mother of three of owing £12,000, when in fact she was owed £2,000. It hugely overpaid unpaid carers and then forced them to pay all that extra money back. There have also been the tragic cases of people dying following the wrongful termination of benefits. Putting each and every person in the social-security system at the mercy of the algorithm risks yet more devastating mistakes. It could even lead to a Kafkaesque, Horizon-style scandal, with potentially millions of people at risk.

What’s especially troubling about Labour’s plan is that the government is fully aware of just how flawed and intrusive it is. Just a few months ago, Labour politicians fought the then Conservative government’s original financial-surveillance proposals, pointing out the dangers of automatically treating every member of society, particularly the poorest, with suspicion. At the time, the public agreed with Labour. Over 270,000 people signed petitions against the original Conservative plans, and legal experts warned that such sweeping surveillance powers would likely violate the right to privacy.

So Labour’s volte face raises serious questions about its integrity, and its willingness to embrace mass surveillance. By ushering in what used to be a Conservative policy, Labour is alienating its core supporters – including its own members. When it comes to welfare, Starmer’s government seems set on adopting the same divisive strategies as its predecessors, demonising the poor, reinforcing harmful stereotypes and deterring people from accessing the benefits to which they are entitled.

Pensioners, disabled people, carers and countless others who receive welfare shouldn’t have to worry about their bank accounts being scrutinised by the state. Nor should the general public have to fear being dragged into a mass-surveillance net. Labour should put greater value on our civil liberties, including the right to privacy, and urgently rethink this approach.

If it doesn’t, Keir Starmer’s government could find itself in even more trouble. By pursuing policies in office that it opposed in opposition, it is shamelessly betraying the trust of voters.

Susannah Copson is legal and policy officer at Big Brother Watch.