DWP Investigative Practices & Your Privacy

Disability

One of the objectives of the DWP is to assess whether someone who is claiming disability benefits is in fact disabled. They describe their mission as such: “The most important aspect of an investigation into disability benefits is understanding exactly what the customer has declared they can and cannot do, and gathering evidence which either proves or disproves their statement.” And surveillance plays a role in fulfilling that mission: “Surveillance should be used to obtain evidence of a person’s physical capability and in some cases their mental capability too.” [Part one, page 276]

The sub-section on Authorised Surveillance in the section on Awards of Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, Attendance Allowance and Carer’s Allowance mentions that: “For Personal Independence Payment (PIP) there is a psychological distress component to consider.” The guide does not describe how that component should be taken into consideration.

That very section contains a list of what surveillance evidence can establish. However, that list has been redacted. Privacy International is currently working on accessing that list and the grounds on which it is has been redacted.

Unanswered questions

Despite the incredible amount of details that can be found in this two-part guide on investigating benefits fraud, some questions remained however unanswered. As we have highlighted throughout this piece some of the most sensitive information about the nature of the data that could be collected and how it could be used has been removed. We are currently working on trying to obtain such information or at least challenging the grounds for refusing to disclose it.

More importantly, what remains a key question is how specific cases are singled out and investigated. In other words, what triggers an investigation? We know that the DWP relies on a hotline, the National Benefit Fraud Hotline, that encourages people to inform on individuals, whom they suspect might be committing fraud. But what else does the DWP rely on? In the age of artificial intelligence and automated decision-making used for distributing welfare – a trend noted by the UN special rapporteur on Extreme Poverty during his visit to the UK – should we assume there is an element of automation in detecting cases of alleged fraud? Those are questions Privacy International hopes to find answers to.

Challenging the narrative

The fraud investigation guide reveals some insights into how the department in charge of allocating benefits and pensions has been turned into a surveillance machine, where people are employed to spy on others, where deals are struck with companies and the media to track down individuals and expose their lives in the papers. This comes at a huge cost. In order to justify it to the taxpayers, governments have to promote a narrative that “benefits cheats” are a real threat to our society. This narrative has long been challenged by academics and researchers, as we highlighted in our previous work. We think the real threat to society is this very system where governments can track benefits claimants – people who are often in very vulnerable situations – in the streets, at the gym, at their bingo club or as they travel. We think it is time to challenge the dominant narrative about what the real threats to our society: arbitrary, invasive and opaque surveillance and data exploitation.