DWP may soon be able to track where people go on holiday under new plans to end benefit fraud

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) recently published the findings from a survey measuring the public’s response to proposed new powers to tackle fraud, error and debt in the benefits system. For each of the six potential new measures described in the ‘British Social Attitudes Survey ’, there were more respondents who saw the power as acceptable than those who saw it as unacceptable.

The potential legislative measures in the survey include providing the DWP with greater third-party access to data, collecting information about where claimants are spending money, asking banks to share information about accounts which look like someone may be committing fraud, enabling trained investigators to execute search and seizure orders and giving them the power to make arrests.

Two of the potential new powers were seen as “completely unacceptable” by more than 10 per cent of the overall sample - the power to make arrests (13%) and the scenario in which DWP could collect information from an airline to see where a claimant is travelling (11%).

The survey was completed by 2,127 people between June 15 and 21, 2023, comprising a nationally representative sample of 1,782 people and a boost of 345 additional claimants.

Potential new powers and impact

Overall, the survey determined that power relating to cross-government data-sharing was most commonly seen as acceptable, whilst the proposed arrest powers were least commonly seen as acceptable.

The list below represents each of the potential new powers and the percentage of acceptable responses.

Potential power

Government organisations sharing data with DWP about claimants

• Acceptable - 70%
• Acceptable among claimants - 58%

Asking banks to share information about accounts which look like someone may be committing fraud

• Acceptable - 64%
• Acceptable among claimants - 51%

Collecting banking information as soon as fraud is suspected, rather than waiting for a criminal investigation

• Acceptable - 60%
• Acceptable among claimants - 47%

Trained DWP investigators having search and seizure powers

• Acceptable - 59%
• Acceptable among claimants - 44%

Collecting information about where claimants are spending money

• Acceptable - 52%
• Acceptable among claimants - 37%

Trained DWP investigators having arrest powers

• Acceptable - 51%
• Acceptable among claimants - 39%

The report on GOV.UK said: “Within the group of DWP claimants, there were consistently lower proportions of people considering the new powers to be acceptable and higher proportions of people considering them unacceptable.

"However, even within this group, there were more people considering the new powers to be acceptable than people who thought they were unacceptable, for every power except collecting information about where claimants were spending money, where more claimants thought it was unacceptable (41%) than acceptable (37%).

“However, when described in the form of a scenario, more claimants thought this power was acceptable (42%) than unacceptable (36%). Some of these differences were small, with claimants fairly evenly split on the acceptability of arrest powers (39% acceptable vs. 37% unacceptable).”

In terms of which powers were most and least acceptable, claimants’ views tended to reflect those of the sample as a whole.

The DWP’s ‘Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System’ policy paper was published in May 2022, you can read it in full on GOV.UK here.

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