The Labour government’s latest plans at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is a Post Office scandal-scale disaster waiting to happen. Specifically, the department – with a rapsheet of failures to its name – now wants to not only snoop on benefit claimant bank accounts, but snatch money straight from them. It’s over DWP benefit fraud. Merchant of death and demonising rhetoric Liz Kendall was hinting at all this in the Telegraph – but obviously hasn’t put the wheels in motion on it – at least not yet.
However, it would be completely in character with this callous continuity Conservative government.
DWP benefit fraud: another dangerous idea
Of course, anyone who knows the DWP, knows what a catastrophically horrendous idea this is. That’s not least because the department hasn’t exactly got a track record of getting things right:
I think a basic tenet of a just society should be the state not being able to access citizen’s bank accounts without a warrant. So many overpayments and sanctions are overturned on appeal, this will cost lives. https://t.co/mZLecj4GkV
— Jim Monaghan (@JimMonaghan10) October 20, 2024
Take housing benefit claimants for instance. It was only in June that campaign group Big Brother Watch exposed how the DWP had wrongfully forced 200,000 housing benefit claimants through fraud investigations.
What’s more, as the Canary has repeatedly pointed out – benefit fraud is a fiction – fabricated by successive austerity-obsessed governments and fanned by right-wing corporate media shills to scapegoat marginalised communities.
The Telegraph was getting in on the punching down action, with it’s little puerile ‘gotcha’ moment that isn’t. Fraud has soared (soared they tell you) during the pandemic to, wait for it, a whole 4%. Except, it really hasn’t anyway. For one, that includes its own errors too. YES, it lumps its OWN mistakes in these statistics.
Furthermore, the Canary’s Steve Topple has spelled out the nonsense that is the DWP’s categorisation of benefit fraud before. Specifically, he’s underscored how much of it is based on “assumptions and guesswork”. It includes people who have forgone their benefit, rather than engage with benefit reviews for example. We can’t possibly think of another reason people would choose not to deal with the DWP than to commit fraud. Nothing to do with its degrading, punitive, and inaccessible processes at all.
So even if we’re to take the fraud stats in isolation – a sizeable chunk of that isn’t actually fraud at all. Then, let’s talk Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Fraud rates were so infinitesmally small last year, the DWP literally rounded it down to zero. Zilch. Nada.
When things go wrong…
Naturally, none of these facts will stop the Labour government and Liz Kendall from ploughing ahead with this despicable DWP benefit fraud plan.
However, as ever, it’ll be chronically ill, disabled, poor, and other oppressed communities at the sharp end of this:
TW DWP
This is the Post Office Scandal waiting to happen. Think how often the DWP have been proven to get it wrong at a group level. Think how it will make claimants feel even more watched and surveilled, squeezing hope and health. pic.twitter.com/1gmjUA7ePS
— Dr Jay Watts (@Shrink_at_Large) October 19, 2024
Some raised the fact that the DWP draining people’s bank accounts could leave people out of pocket. Crucially, this will be people already living in poverty thanks to the paltry support the DWP has provided anyway:
Another day another Labour policy that will literally kill people. The DWP are notoriously prone to errors, and allowing them to take away money from bank accounts without any warning or legal case will leave people without food, heating or rent money. Fucking disgusting. https://t.co/VmjOLIicSv
— A (@ItsNotPiss) October 20, 2024
Of course, it’s not all that different from the way the DWP has conducted disgraceful benefit deductions. That is, the DWP has long been raiding benefit claimant bank accounts on behalf of utility companies and landlords.
So now, Labour look to be gearing up to roll out yet another scheme that could so very easily go tits up. Obviously, it’s a terrifying prospect.
This is especially so when we also know it has a penchant for demonising disabled people as fraudsters. And most significantly, its blame and shame culture is invariably denying, removing, and accusing them of fraud – completely wrongly.
The fear over DWP benefit fraud is the point
But of course, the fear is part of the point. It’s all wrapped up with a nice little bow in its back to work coercion agenda more broadly. In other words, it doesn’t want people to claim in the first place – and acting as a deterrent is what the DWP does best. Naturally, it’s all to save the government money it prefers to funnel off to the private sector.
However, its new fraud pet project could cost many claimants their lives – and Labour knows it. After all, the fear the DWP instils already has actively made claimants physical and mental health worse:
DWP get it wrong so often that this is dangerous!
The stress of anticipating another tribunal is enough. Every letter is panic inducing.
Not only do they make us suffer the same fight over & over, but seeking to empty our accounts in addition will see many more disabled deaths😩 https://t.co/Yh0w7KeQbt— ♀️🇯🇲Googly Eyed Llama🇯🇲♀️ (@GooglyeyedLlama) October 20, 2024
It’s a fucked up welfare system when it’s more focused on a cracking down on miniscule rates of fraud than providing people the support they need to live. Unfortunately, so far, that’s been Labour and Liz Kendall’s approach to DWP benefit fraud writ large. This would be the next Post Office scandal were it not for one appalling fact – the DWP’s “systemic violations” of people’s human rights pretty much already is.
Featured image via the Canary
