Labours Vorgehen gegen Sozialbetrug würde Beamten Zugriff auf Bankkonten ermöglichen

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/sep/24/labours-benefit-crackdown-would-allow-officials-to-access-bank-accounts

Von JayR_97

21 Comments

  1. HangryScotsman on

    Given one of the final acts of spite by the Tory government before the election was they made it possible to spy on benefit claimants with zero judicial oversight this development isn’t that surprising unfortunately.

    Instead they should be going after rich tax dodgers rather than attacking the vulnerable.

  2. corbynista2029 on

    Policies that Tories wanted to implement but Starmer did it first:

    > Cut at least £3bn in departmental spendings and 2% in back-office cost

    > Cut Winter Fuel Payment

    > Criminalise puberty blocker usage indefinitely

    > Back Tory’s anti-protest laws in court

    > Stop building the new hospitals

    > Stop railway upgrade plans

    > Crackdown on benefit fraud

    > Reduce sickness benefits claimants

    Any more that I’m missing?

  3. Ok_Fly_9544 on

    I’m sure there’s no way around this that is a different type of fraud…

  4. newnortherner21 on

    Much of the benefit fraud I suspect is people with cash in hand jobs or income. So I am not sure it will have much impact.

  5. Low-Educator6026 on

    Oh good. Now the government can look (easily) on our banks. Great idea because power never creeps to other things. Labour is really the communist party for the 21st century.

    Hey don’t by that we don’t like it. Here have a social credit for driving an election car.

  6. LiteratureLoud3993 on

    This would be their first real strike for me..

    Cost cutting is one thing, and we all knew there would be significant pain in the short term, but warming over the Tories snoopers charter as a way to monitor benefits claimants is repellent in the extreme.

    This just assumes guilt and puts the onus on the recipient to “prove” they are worthy of the benefit.

    I’ve said for a long time, that these kinds of measures are the thin end of the wedge, and pave the way forward for directly controlling what people are allowed to spend benefits on – it has little to do with actually tackling fraud, because there are already significant powers to investigate and prosecute those engaged in it.

    Tories failed with the Porn pass
    Tories had significant success with the NHS app
    Now Labour are pushing ahead with active account monitoring of innocent people

    The Government want to be on your devices and in your finances and when you look at how they are trialling a fully programmable digital pound, some dots are very easy to connect.

    And the only reason for that is more restrictions and control.

  7. Infinite_Pack_7942 on

    After seeing that case of the bulgarian couple who had hundreds of people on UK benefits with most of them never setting foot in the UK and taking millions from the taxpayer purse, I honestly don’t see this as a bad thing.

    I’ve used benefits before and might in the future so I understand not wanting the gov to be able to pry into your account but the fact is that the government agency’s are fighting losing battles against advancing fraud techniques.

    Maybe they could set up a 3rd party system where someone has access to their bank accounts for a short time and then only reports it IF something looks wrong, not unrestricted access.

  8. People do not realise there are genuine ways to do a fraud.

    And no… Not by signing up for something you would not be able to get.

    Eg. Working for a council or within the disabilities grants for adapting properties to suit people’s needs… You encounter many people who are on all sorts of benefits but happen to go on 2/3 holidays a year from Spain, Thailand to Bali…

    But then they claim that can’t afford a 5k for adapting their bathroom and claim that via a grant. They get the grant automatically because they are on passported benefits.

    This was far more common within council housing than on the dfg side. (On dfg side you had more people who had their parents live with them, driving Bentley’s and being in a house worth 400k or more but because the adaptation is for their parents, their parents can get them. even though they could do the work themselves just fine)

    But we can’t say no. The budget is very limited and the waiting period is over 1.5 years.

    So it not just frequently claiming A certain benefit as much a compound issue between different benefits and inability of saying no when there are other ways.

  9. This is how centralised banking is dangerous…

    Some have been saying this for years.

    But it will only be a problem when the people you care about are affected…

  10. Mammoth-Ad-562 on

    Just wait until the legislature allows access to private accounts and mortgage lenders can see what people spend their money on, then adjust their interest rates accordingly.

    This country is finished, it’s now embarking on the ‘survival of the fittest’ era. The saddest thing is there are still people who will support it because they are gullible and it’s sold to them in a way that takes advantage of the fact they are more concerned about someone getting something they don’t.

  11. WTF is the point in voting Labour if they’re just going to out-tory the tories???

  12. caspian_sycamore on

    People are renting out council houses in London, there is no mechanism to tackle this, nobody checks who live there etc but now they say they will check bank accounts.

    I am not sure if they can tho, the UK just don’t have the workforce to enforce laws and regulations.

  13. PursuitOfMemieness on

    Putting aside privacy issue, and the very obvious disdain this shows for people on benefits, I very much suspect the cost of actually intensively investigating and stopping benefit fraud is going to far outstrip potential savings.

  14. This is OK as long as HMRC gets access to crack down on the rich as well.

  15. J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A on

    What the hell do the right wing actually want?

    They moan that there’s billions being lost in benefits fraud. But the moment the government introduced checks to prevent benefit fraud, they moan that there’s checks for benefits fraud.

  16. TesticleezzNuts on

    Ahh yes once again it’s those at the bottom who take the brunt and abuse because they can’t fight back while them at the top get a free ride.

    Same old government different Colours.

  17. Porticulus on

    I don’t like where this gov is going at all. I can’t put my finger on it, but something feels very scary about them if that makes any sense.

  18. dataplague on

    Am i to understand this isn’t quite as invasive as the Tory proposal. Or is it the same? It reads it’s for suspected fraud accounts. Not just banks reporting to deep/ hmrc each month what’s in the account. Or am I mistaken

  19. “Sorry but you can only spend your poverty pounds in Gov approved supermarkets”

    (Who charge 20% more as they have a captive market)

  20. chin_waghing on

    The real issue isn’t the benefits fraud going though bank accounts IMO, it’s the people on benefits going on holidays brought in cash and buying bikes etc in cash, or using other peoples cards to buy digitally and giving them cash.

    How that cash is usually obtained, 9/10 times its labour work or dealing. I used to know several people like this

    This can’t go well no matter what they try to

  21. Ponder_wisely on

    Why not access the bank accounts of people cheating on their taxes?Sometimes I think England is just well-off people – who ALL cheat on their taxes – frothing at the mouth at a few poor people for cheating on their benefits. Govt estimates are that for every £1 cheated on benefits, £4 pounds are cheated on taxes by the moneyed class.
    So why I’m supposed to be up in arms about some skint sod who’s getting an extra £30 a month on his benefits I really don’t know.

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