CP
It always starts with the pensioners. When the coffers run dry and the lefty bureaucrats are scratching around for loose change between the cushions of the Treasury sofa, it’s the elderly who end up in the crosshairs. Always the softest targets. Always the easiest to blame.
Now, under the banner of “fraud prevention” and “efficiency,” Labour’s latest brainwave will force British banks to snoop on pensioners’ bank accounts and report anything “suspicious” to the Department for Work and Pensions.
You heard that right, the banks are to become unpaid government spies, rifling through your grandmother’s transactions for evidence of economic subversion.
Under the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill, banks will be required to share payments data of anyone receiving social security, including retirees on pension credit. If the Labour Government decides a payment was made in “error”, even if it was their error, they’ll simply reach into the account and take the money back directly.
It’s being sold, of course, as a crackdown on fraud. The DWP claims it lost £9.5 billion last year in overpayments and fraudulent claims — but here’s the thing: over half of that was due to its own mistakes. Yes, the same government department that can’t spell “competence” without outsourcing it to a consultant is now deputising the banks to fix its mess by raiding pensioners’ accounts.
Meanwhile, £610 million in pension credit was overpaid last year, with £270 million attributed to fraud. So naturally, Labour’s solution isn’t to modernise its own systems or train its staff, it’s to unleash AI surveillance developed by the Cabinet Office, no less.
Big Brother, but with Bureaucracy
The DWP insists, reassuringly, that it “won’t have access to bank accounts”, only the data inside them. Erm… is there a difference? Is this supposed to be a semantic comfort blanket for the digitally deluded? Banks are even forbidden from telling customers that their data has been shared. You could have your savings combed through by an algorithm and never know a thing about it.
This is not targeted surveillance. This is population-level financial monitoring, with no requirement for suspicion of fraud. As Big Brother Watch put it, it’s “unprecedented.” Indeed it is. In any other country, we’d call this what it is… state snooping without cause.
But perhaps that’s the point. The modern British state has grown addicted to watching, measuring, tracking and taxing its own citizens. And when Labour gets involved, it inevitably dresses it up as compassion. “Protecting taxpayers.” “Safeguarding welfare.” “Making sure the system works for everyone.” All euphemisms for more control.
The Vietnam Connection
If you think this is all a harmless administrative tweak, look east. In Vietnam, the state-controlled bank has just frozen 86 million accounts belonging to anyone who refuses to sign up for a Digital ID. That ID system includes… deep breath… fingerprints, facial recognition, passports, criminal records, and medical history. Participation is not optional. Your body, your data, your money… all the property of the state.
Coming to Britain soon, no doubt. To protect the children, of course. (Said with the appropriate dollop of sarcasm.)
And when the Cabinet Office proudly unveils its new AI to “detect anomalies,” you can be certain of one thing: it won’t be cutting the bloated Civil Service, or identifying the billions wasted on white elephant projects and vanity spending. No, it’ll be busy flagging Doris from Doncaster because she withdrew £60 in cash on a Tuesday.
Liebor’s New Motto: We Watch, Therefore We Are
It’s almost comic, if it weren’t so sinister. A government that can’t run a train network or process a passport on time suddenly believes it can run a national AI surveillance regime. It’s as if the entire apparatus of Labour has been cross-bred with Orwell’s Ministry of Truth and an overzealous accountant from HMRC.
And while they prattle on about “fairness” and “proportionality,” the reality is blindingly obvious: this is a desperate cash grab. One step away from the universal stipend, where everyone gets a state allowance and any excess you earn is quietly clawed back for “redistribution.”
The message is clear: trust the state, surrender your privacy, and don’t dare question why the very institution most responsible for the errors, the DWP itself, is being rewarded with more power, not less.
A Government Without Shame
“Do they have no morals?” is perhaps too generous a question. This is a government convinced that good intentions justify bad laws. And when Labour ministers want to extract money from citizens, they don’t start at the top, or among their own bureaucratic ranks. They start with the pensioners, the people least likely to fight back, least able to navigate the digital labyrinth, and most reliant on trust.
To which one can only say: sort out your own house first. Audit the DWP’s internal chaos before you turn Britain’s banks into extensions of the surveillance state.
Because when Big Brother finally comes wearing a red rosette, don’t say you weren’t warned.
Jack Lions
This article (Labour’s Moral Bankruptcy: Snooping on Pensioners to Cover Its Own Mistakes) was created and published by Conservative Post and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Jack Lions
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