Orwellian new banking surveillance powers offer huge potential for abuse

Telegraph

5 hours ago

To what extent do you trust this, or any previous, government?
It's a relevant question, given the sweeping new powers that parliament is seemingly being asked to hand over to our elected – and unelected – masters on a weekly basis. The point of the question, however, is in the fact of its being asked at all: while there has always been a healthy degree of suspicion between the governed and the government, it is hard to imagine a time when that disconnect has been greater than it is today.
A civil service obsessed with identity politics of all varieties, which threatens strike action if its members are not allowed to remain at home most of the week while suffering no loss in pay, which reserves the right to complain publicly about policies being pursued by the elected government, cannot hope to retain the good will and support of the public. Yet now the government has chosen to give middle-ranking civil servants with unprecedented powers to spy on ordinary citizens' financial affairs.
As revealed by The Telegraph today, a new fraud Bill will allow civil servants to demand that banks provide personal information about an individual's account without a court order, and extract funds if they 'reasonably believe' that money is owed to the taxpayer. They will also be given the power to ask for a search and entry warrant and to freeze bank accounts.
We may assume the new measures can be filed under 'seemed a good idea at the time', since they were initially proposed under the previous Conservative government in response to the eye-watering levels of fraud that took place during that weird period of history defined by the Covid pandemic and lockdown. So much public money disappeared under relatively little public scrutiny or oversight that the new government feels emboldened to clamp down on potential ongoing fraud, secure in the knowledge that the public would tolerate never-before-seen investigative powers wielded by relatively junior civil servants on behalf of the public purse.
And if those powers could be guaranteed to be used only against the fraudsters, there would be very little opposition to the new measures. The question is whether those powers, once granted, will not be used more and more against ordinary citizens who are merely suspected, perhaps with little evidence, of not paying enough tax or claiming too many benefits without justification. Do we really want to live in a country where citizens' bank accounts can be examined, frozen or have cash withdrawn – all without the account holder being told what is happening or why?
As the legislation currently stands, sign-off by a minister, which would offer at least the appearance of some democratic accountability, would not be required before an individual's bank account is accessed and further action proposed. The powers could be wielded by any anti-fraud official with a civil service rank above 'higher executive officer' – a Whitehall middle manager – and will apply to members of the Public Sector Fraud Authority, a new government body designed to crack down on criminal fraud against public bodies.
Naturally, civil liberties groups have raised concerns about the legislation. Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group, told The Telegraph that the 'dangerous new bank spying powers' would 'effectively turn banks into agents of the state, tasked with spying on everyone's bank accounts and reporting back to the Government'.
There's an ugly element of arrogance in all of this, a touch of 'We are the masters now' sort of philosophy from a party that won a 170-seat Commons majority on barely a third of the popular vote. The question posed earlier as to whether you trust this or previous governments can be reframed and put to current ministers: would you trust these powers to be used fairly by ministers of another party, after the next election? In the event of a Reform-led coalition government, are you content for such unprecedented executive power over individuals' livelihoods to be in the hands of your political opponents?
Fraud must be challenged and detected and its perpetrators held to account. But in doing so, the government needs to take citizens with them. At the start of this century, the Proceeds of Crime Act was opposed by many in the legal establishment who felt it would result in miscarriages of justice in the legitimate fight against organised crime. Those concerns were proved groundless thanks to the legal safeguards in the legislation. Unless similarly robust safeguards are inserted into this new legislation, ministers risk damaging further, perhaps irretrievably, the delicate and essential political contract that exists between them and their voters.