DWP crackdown on retirees
DWP checking state pensioners’ bank accounts for two things – full list
State pensioners face bank accounts being checked as the Departmenrt for Work and Pensions tries to analyse the “accuracy” of Winter Fuel Payment and Pension Credit awards. Retirees are at risk from invasive new powers from the DWP, it has emerged.
Richard Foord, a Liberal Democrats MP for Honiton and Sidmouth, asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions “what recent estimate she has made of the cost to the public purse of fraud” in relation to TWO things.
Mr Foord was asking the question “in relation to” two points: Pension Credit and the Winter Fuel Allowance. In response, Labour Party MP Andrew Western replied. Mr Western, Labour for Stretford and Urmston, spoke out.
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Mr Western said: “The Department publishes yearly estimates of fraud and error in the benefit system. The latest estimates for Pension Credit are available in section 9.
“Estimates of Winter Fuel Payment fraud is not routinely published; more information can be found on the government website.
“The Department is taking action to reduce incorrectness in all benefits. The Public Authorities (Fraud Error and Recovery) Act 2025 Eligibility Verification Measure requires banks and financial institutions to provide data that will enable the Department to check the accuracy of awards.
“We are also introducing case reviews in Pension Credit to help ensure customers continue to receive the correct benefit amount.”
Privacy activist group Big Brother Watch has previously questioned the legality of the plan for DWP officials to run checks on the financial data of benefits claimants.
Big Brother Watch said it has commissioned legal advice from barristers Dan Squires KC and Aidan Wills of Matrix Chamber, and that this was that it would amount to “an unprecedented regime of intrusive generalised financial surveillance across the population, not restrict6ed to serious crime at all”.
Baroness Kidron, former director of civil liberties group Liberty, described the powers as “cruel, dangerous and disproportionate” and that they are focused on poor people.
“Cruel,” she said, “because they put the most vulnerable in society in a situation where family, landlords and employers will withdraw support to protect their own ‘connected accounts’ which will be open for scrutiny.
“Dangerous because we have seen how digital systems, such as Horizon, can easily provide false signals.
“Disproportionate because the DWP has powers to get this information if they suspect wrongdoing. This is a phishing exercise at eyewatering scale, its presence in a Data Protection Bill is contradictory to the bill’s stated purpose.”