From Welfare State to Surveillance State: Labour’s Algorithmic Crackdown on the Poor

The Rich Hide Billions While Labour Riles Through Your Pittance 

Red Tories, Blue Methods: Labour’s Dystopian Mass Surveillance Plan Would Create Financial Apartheid…

Oh, how wonderful to live in Starmer’s Britain, where the government’s idea of justice is to deploy algorithmic bloodhounds to sniff through the bank accounts of pensioners and disabled people while billionaires continue stashing their wealth in offshore hidey-holes with the full blessing of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. 

Welcome to the new age of haves and have-nots, where if you’re wealthy enough to hire a tax consultant, your financial affairs remain sacrosanct, but if you’re poor enough to need Universal Credit, the state feels entitled to digitally frisk you without so much as a by-your-leave. 

Labour’s bank account monitoring scheme targeting benefit claimants isn’t just bad policy, it’s a satirical masterpiece of hypocrisy so perfect it could have been written by Armando Iannucci. Picture this: while Russian oligarchs launder billions through London property and corporations funnel profits through tax havens with accounting tricks that would make Houdini blush, Starmer’s crack team of fraud-busters is dedicating its resources to making sure Doris from Doncaster isn’t hiding a fiver under her mattress. 

The numbers tell the story better than we ever could. With 5.4 million people claiming out-of-work benefits, the DWP identifies a whopping… wait for it… 11,000 cases of benefit fraud annually. That’s 0.2% of claimants. Not 20%. Not 2%. But 0.2% is a percentage so small it would make a homoeopathic remedy look concentrated by comparison. 

For this microscopic problem, Labour believes the appropriate response is to turn every bank in Britain into an extension of the surveillance state, treating every pensioner, every disabled person, every carer, and every unemployed worker as a potential criminal until proven otherwise. 

As Baroness Jenny Jones brilliantly put it in the House of Lords: “Never in our history has the government intruded on the privacy of anyone’s bank account without any good reason. And now we’re treating all people on benefits as potential criminals.” 

She offered a suggestion so sensible it naturally has no chance of being implemented: “If MPs think this is a good idea, then why don’t we ask them to go first? With all the cases of corruption, second jobs and undeclared incomes, would MPs be ok if the banks had the ability to raise red flags on their accounts?” 

Indeed, why not start with the legislators themselves? After all, if we’re looking for financial impropriety, the Palace of Westminster offers richer pickings than any council estate in the land. But of course, that would be unthinkable, an invasion of privacy, don’t you know. Such intrusions are only acceptable when aimed at the grubby poor, not our betters in their ermine and pinstripes. 

So while the billionaire class continues to treat tax as an optional extra and MPs moonlight for corporations they’re supposed to be regulating, the government marshals its resources to scrutinise how your gran spends her pension. This isn’t governance, it’s class warfare dressed up as fiscal responsibility. 

The Machinery of Mass Surveillance 

Labour’s Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill, being rushed through Parliament with minimal scrutiny, would compel banks to deploy algorithms to monitor the accounts of anyone receiving benefits. These systems would flag individuals based on secret “eligibility criteria” determined by the Department for Work and Pensions. 

The bill effectively resurrects one of the most controversial elements of the Tories’ scrapped Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, proving once again that Starmer’s Labour is nothing more than Conservatism with a red rosette. 

Under these proposals, banks would be forced to scan accounts algorithmically, creating a mass surveillance system targeting society’s most vulnerable. Those flagged by these secretive algorithms would have their names and account details handed to the government for investigation. Worse still, the DWP could then order direct deductions from people’s accounts, plus “administrative costs”, without court oversight. 

As we’ve previously reported on Labour Heartlands, this represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between citizens and the state. No longer will you be presumed innocent until proven guilty; if you’re poor enough to need benefits, you’ll be presumed guilty until proven innocent. 

Red Flag Britain: Starmer Turned Banks into Benefit Police

This attack on financial privacy doesn’t stand alone. It works hand-in-glove with Labour’s Data (Use and Access) Bill, which would dramatically expand the use of automated decision-making without meaningful human oversight. 

This toxic combination means life-altering decisions about benefit entitlements could be made by algorithms with known biases, with humans merely “rubber-stamping” these automated judgments without the training or authority to challenge them. 

The Regulatory Policy Committee, the government’s own watchdog, has already warned that ministers have failed to “sufficiently take into consideration the potential impact on the poorest members of society.” Yet Starmer’s administration pushes ahead regardless, prioritising the appearance of being “tough on fraud” over the real-world harm these measures will cause. 

Even the Banks Are Worried 

When even the banking industry, hardly known for its social conscience, raises the alarm, you know we’re in dangerous territory. UK Finance, the trade body representing British banks, has warned that these plans could “undermine the banks’ own efforts to protect vulnerable account holders” and violate their regulatory obligations to customers. 

Former Shadow Chancellor, now independent MP, John McDonnell cut to the heart of the hypocrisy, noting: “If there was a group of people whose accounts we would want to monitor because there has been a history of fraud, and who have had to pay money back, some have gone to prison, it would be MPs.” 

Yet MPs’ accounts will remain unscrutinised, while disabled pensioners and single parents will have their finances algorithmically dissected. 

The Thin End of the Wedge 

As Rick Burgess from Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People warns, these powers won’t remain limited to benefit claimants: “At the moment, they’re saying that if you get a benefit award from the DWP, you should have fewer rights to financial privacy than a citizen who doesn’t, and that is discrimination.” 

“But when banks start spying on behalf of the government, all that remains is for statutory instruments to change the targeting… Once the capacity, the technology and the fundamental legal change is in place, the mission creep is very, very easy for them to pull off, and potentially the whole country could find itself under surveillance.” 

This is precisely the danger Labour Heartlands has been highlighting since our inception. The infrastructure of surveillance is never built solely for its stated purpose, it inevitably expands. Today’s benefit claimants, tomorrow’s trade unionists, the day after’s political dissidents. 

A Massive Intrusion for Minimal Return 

Perhaps most damning is the government’s own assessment of these measures. According to DWP figures analysed by Big Brother Watch, these draconian powers would recover just 1.4% of annual fraud and error loss. 

Let that sink in: for a negligible financial gain, Labour is willing to fundamentally alter the relationship between citizens and state, creating a surveillance apparatus that would make Orwell shudder. 

The DWP’s weasel words don’t stand up to scrutiny. Their spokesperson claims: “This does not involve access to benefit claimants’ bank accounts.” This is semantic nonsense, forcing banks to monitor and report on account activity is effectively the same as having access, just with banks acting as government agents. 

The Working Class Deserves Better 

Labour was founded to represent the interests of working people, including those who, through unemployment, illness, or disability, find themselves temporarily or permanently unable to work. The party’s betrayal of these founding principles could not be more complete than in this bill. 

Zarah Sultana MP, one of the few remaining authentic voices on Labour’s benches, correctly identifies that this legislation risks “creating a two-tier justice system, one for the very wealthy, who will never face this kind of intrusion, and another for those on benefits, who will be subject to constant scrutiny.” 

The Time to Resist Is Now 

We must stand together against these authoritarian measures. If implemented, they would strip away our financial privacy, undermine the presumption of innocence, and create a dangerous precedent for expanding surveillance to other groups. 

Everyone wants genuine fraud to be tackled, but the government already has substantial powers to investigate suspected cases. What’s being proposed isn’t targeted investigation but mass suspicionless surveillance of millions of innocent people. 

The Labour Party might have forgotten what it means to stand up for working people and the vulnerable, but we haven’t. Join Labour Heartlands in demanding an immediate halt to this legislation. Contact your MP, raise awareness, and make it clear that financial apartheid has no place in a democratic society. 

Because if we don’t stand up for privacy, equality, and financial freedom today, tomorrow it might be your account under algorithmic scrutiny, with no human oversight, no right of appeal, and no presumption of innocence. 

Paul Knaggs

Editor, founder, Labour Heartlands, Citizen journalist. 𝙁𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙧𝙣 𝙀𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙍𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩. Fighting a constant struggle with dyslexia that’s overcome with a burning desire to speak out against the corrupt political system and the social injustices it creates. Advocate for Free speech and open, accountable, democracy. #GTTO