UK government's bank data sharing plan slammed as 'financial snoopers' charter' Privacy campaigners are criticizing UK proposals to force banks to share data from the accounts of government benefit claimants, saying the ploy amounts to "a financial snoopers' charter targeted to automate suspicion." The new Labour government has decided to resurrect the idea from the previous administration via legislation …
There is absolutely nothing unusual about that. When I took severance with a lump sum the PAYE system assumed that the rather large payment in my final month reflected an increase in salary and bumped up my tax into the highest band accordingly. The overpaid tax all came back to me two weeks after I file my tax return. This isn't bank snooping; it's just how PAYE works.
It works, if and only if the PAYE coding / repayments are prompt. Unfortunately, sometimes this can take 6-9 months. What you find then, is that you get an overpayment payment, followed by an underpayment, followed by overpayment etc.
The seesaw can take over three *years* to balance out.
And as I found out to my cost, if you try to hurry it along by phoning etc, that’s just another rogue input banging the system up and down. It’s all fine if you’ve got £20k in savings, to float the underflow, and are comfortable knowing what the “right answer” is.
But people do get into real trouble like this - assuming that when HMRC give them “tax back” it must be the end of the story, and so the rest of it must be theirs to spend.
It works, if and only if the PAYE coding / repayments are prompt. Unfortunately, sometimes this can take 6-9 months.
My tax return was submitted in late April. I received a full refund of overpaid tax just under two weeks later. But then, I didn't messing things up by bombarding them with communication, phone calls and so on.
In any case this has nothing whatsoever to do with banks doing anything, including snooping.
The other thing I forgot to mention, is that your scheme only works for “relatively small” amounts of money where the capital fits within PAYE tax bands.
Suppose, for example, you sell a small middle-class-type business for £5M. You may well find that, having paid the actual tax owing and in your view and your accountants view fully settled up, 6 months later you get another letter from HMRC demanding £1.2M for the 6-months forward tax on the income they assume you are making.
You *must pay this demand*. Doesn’t matter that they are wrong, you absolutely *must pay this* within the deadline. Argument/refund comes afterwards. But you are going to have to find that *cash*, out of probably rather illiquid long-term investments.
Seems the accountant messed up and incorrectly attributed the gains from selling the business to income and didn’t apply the appropriate tax reliefs due to small business owners/traders selling the business they started and own.
HMRC are a bit odd, if you tell them before hand, they can stop a notice/demand going out, but once the notice/demand has been issued (ie. the computer job run scheduled, which is typically 10 days before something is issued)…
HMRC behave similarly with respect to inheritance tax; once they have assessed the estate for tax, they expect the tax to be paid within a defined timeframe, which may not be possible due to the lack of liquid assets (ie. Money in the bank).
"A person took voluntary redundancy and retired many years ago, so received tax exempt large sums, and HMRC then changed their tax code claiming that they expected the person to earn more than £100k that year."
That's just the way the (stupid) PAYE / coding system works. When I was still working via my ltd co, we used to pay dividends in March based on the year's figures, leaving suitable working capital for gaps in work, for example. The receipt of a lump sum in March was always treated by HMRC as if it were to be a regular monthly income, and shortly after I would get an absolutely stupid re-coding. The accountant would always easily sort it out.
This data will be all over the internet, or at least the local JobCentre watercooler before the first £100 is recovered. As the article states, the DWP already has the power to view this information if they suspect someone is doing something dodgy. Snooping on people should be difficult and done only when there is genuine suspicion, snooping for snooping's sake never ends well.
Precisely, there's no need to look around people's bank accounts except for fraud. All the DWP needs to do is determine if the last year's income is over £X by comparing with the last year's PAYE figures or self-assessment. If they did that then there would also have been no Winter Fuel Allowance cliff-edge problem either.
We seem to have systems which are really showing their age where one part of government can't query another and to fix that they've gone for full bank account access.
Don't worry, I am sure there are usual suspects ready for bidding to create such a system that will take a decade to partially implement for just a few billions.
I get the feeling that this is the point of this exercise. One of the usual suspects is already flogging a fraud detection system that just needs a hook into the banks data.. Which will involve all the buzzwords that can convince Rachel Reeves that this is a GoodThing(tm). So cloud, AI, savings, maybe even an ability to detect £7,000 in free clothes gifted to benefit claimants but perhaps not declared as benefits in kind. Politicians are, after all one of the biggest welfare claimants.
Oh, and she's also bringing in "Securonomics"-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellorship_of_Rachel_Reeves
It would involve a productivist "active state" taking a more active role in managing the free-market economy, boosting production and drawing up industrial policy, stronger supply chains, and more economic cooperation with international allies with similar economic goals.
We're from the government and we're here to help. Be afraid, be very afraid.. And not long until her first budget.
she's all fur coat and no knickers as goes the old glesga saying (i.e. all front and no substance underneath) particularly as she readily accepted a treasury proposal (winter fuel payments) that various chancellors since its inception have firmly slapped down and several have said its been a long running desire of the treasury civil servants to kill it off but till this point they were firmly told no!
Seems we have went from a govt of billionaires and millionaires to one bought by billionaires and millionaires judging by the sleaze thats already emerged....wonder if it will come out that Certain members are Tory or Heritage Foundation plants?
And hopefully her last.
If the rumours about Council Tax are true then the Robbers of the Labour Party will take some £1200 a year more from me. That does include the 20% Income Tax that I'll pay (and many other pensioners will pay) on the next increase in the State Pension. They are taking twice what they are giving me.
Even the bastweard tories were not this mean.
Now that their rich donors have complained this shambles of a government have decided NOT to go after the rich tax cheats. That leaves us... the working class/middle class to make up the shortfall. This lot are worse than the last lot.
Totally!
They seek to recover £1.6billion over 5 years.
I bet the creation and administration of this "idea" will end up costing more and making some of the most vulnerable in society even more miserable than before as they seek to contest whatever poorly designed and flawed product is built, that automatically flags the wrong individuals, whilst letting the very miscreants who have long since worked out how to game the system, get away scot free!
FFS, this is a Macro issue, with a social care system that is in need of a major overhaul, not more IT to spy on people.
Rant over!
According to HMRC "It is estimated that in 2019/20 the financial loss from tax avoidance was £1.5 billion, while the cost of tax evasion was £5.5 billion."
Seems there might be a better target there. Unfortunately tax cheats can afford to lawyer up while benefit claimants can't and with legal aid pared to the bone, innocent or guilty, they have no chance against the wheels of state so they are a soft target that nobody in power really cares about all that much.
the disabled and social security claimants (remember when the dept for woe and poverty was called the Dept for Social Security aka the DSS and before that the DHSS?) are a soft target as the politicians KNOW the media HATES them, that large sections of the populace are easily turned against them (divide and conquer at its worst) and that really most people couldn't care less....see Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson having to CRAWL off of a train recently for evidence of that
"It is estimated that in 2019/20 the financial loss from tax avoidance was £1.5 billion..."
Does that figure include things like private pension schemes? As that is a form of tax avoidance.
Tax Avoidance, unlike tax evasion, is perfectly legal. If particular forms of tax avoidance are seen as "undesirable" then the government can simply change the law to close any "loopholes" that enable such avoidance.
"Seems there might be a better target there. Unfortunately tax cheats can afford to lawyer up"
Are you including people performing perfectly legal tax avoidance, like the afore mentioned private pension schemes, in your definition of "tax cheats"? After all they're doing something that the law permits, then how/what are they cheating?
My definition of "tax cheats" is people who cheat on their tax.
That would be the £5.5m of tax evasion which you agree is illegal so what are you trying to say?
Tax avoidance loopholes should be closed as soon as they are discovered but that's a legislative issue which would be unpopular with donors to party funds. Here we are cheating the spirit but not the letter of the law, legal but reprehensible.
The thing with tax avoidance is that it is completely legal. Were it not legal, folks like myself would be forced to try and maximise our income so that HMRC make the biggest possible amount from Income Tax off us; the fact that doing so would drive me even more insane than I already am [1] in fairly short order is by the bye.
As it stands, there is no rule that says anyone must maximise the amount of tax they pay.
HMRC obviously sees things a little differently, especially in the light of what happened when they tried capping pension contributions. That little silliness resulted in highly skilled, highly paid medical consultants forming the opinion that being taxed to hell and back wasn't a worthy use of their time when they could instead retire and enjoy the fruits of a lifetime's working. The cap was rescinded fairly rapidly when it was discovered how many consultants this was driving out of the NHS.
I therefore predict that we'll see the usual fallout from when overly optimistic Labour tax-dreams meet reality.
[1] Neurodiversity...
It's a similar situation with the cap gains allowance reduction brought in by the Tories. Reducing the cap gains allowance does absolutely nothing to drag in more tax from the rich, but it hits the lower end pretty hard when they sell grannies old antiques or they decide to sell off their jewelry to pay some bills.
It also stifles investment as well.
Precisely, there's no need to look around people's bank accounts except for fraud. All the DWP needs to do is determine if the last year's income is over £X by comparing with the last year's PAYE figures or self-assessment.
That's kind of the point though. Someone who is committing benefit (or tax) fraud is unlikely to declare their full income. Plus I guess if they're on self-assessment, their income level is probably above the amount for any means-tested benefits. But then any half-way sophisticated fraudster might have multiple bank accounts to try and hide money.
Both DWP and HMRC have the powers to demand financial information already, but that would need them to pro-actively investigate. I'm guessing TPTB have been sold on some 'AI' fraud detection system that could ingest people's bank statements to look for undeclared income and automagically generate fraud reports. Plus there might be some benefits.
It's always puzzled me why, despite billions being spent on government IT, self-assessment forms are sent out blank. So then we have to fill in boxes with information HMRC should already know, like name, address, P11 & P60 data etc. So becomes a copypasta exercise taking data from one HMRC form to another, sending it back with dire warnings that if we make a mistake, there'll be big penalties. Why can't self-assessment forms be sent with that data already completed, for us mere minions to check and declare any additional income (or expenses) on pain of pain?
If goverment can't even do a simple thing like this, I'm rather dubious it'll use any new powers wisely, or accurately.
Presumably widening this access to all actual and potential benefit applicants is the cheapest way.
The DWP will say benefit claimants today, but I suspect they will omit to shutdown the data feed when someone stops claiming benefits and well it will be so much easier to be able to do a bank account assessment before any benefits are claimed…
Neither my wife or I, both chartered professionals, have to do this. We have repeatedly enquired, and even did self assessment for a year in my case, or 2 years in my wife's case, when it first came out, until they told us not to bother unless our situation changed significantly.
We each just send an email once a year with all of our 'working from home' costs and professional subscriptions.
My personal pension has claimed back the tax on my payments since 1988 when I took it out (although it's worth less now than the total I have put in!)
IR know the rest, our income and NI/tax deductions.
How complex are most people's PAYE situations?
Neither my wife or I, both chartered professionals, have to do this. We have repeatedly enquired, and even did self assessment for a year in my case, or 2 years in my wife's case, when it first came out, until they told us not to bother unless our situation changed significantly....
How complex are most people's PAYE situations?
I'm jealous! I had this argument with HMRC. Basically because I was earning >£60k, I was put on self-assessment, even though everything was PAYE. Then was told once you're on self-assessment, you can't get off. Then more frustration when I set up my own company and had to submit both employer, employee paperwork, and then copypasta extracts of that onto self assessment forms again.
Government could probably save a whole lot more money by reducing that burden on both HMRC and us, but it's bureaucracy and they love make-work. Or it could just simplify the whole tax system instead. It's a truly bizarre system, especially when they think there's an error and HMRC's random number generator creates a penalty.
I started full time work at 16 and SIX WEEKS later, at the end of the tax year, got a self-assessment form. Unfortunately for me I had a small Post Office savings account that paid interest without deducting tax which meant I owed a few pounds more than I'd paid through payroll. As a result I then was stuck on self-assessment every year afterwards, even after closing the PO account. Oddly enough it stopped when I got married and changed my surname, but that's a pretty extreme way of avoiding HMRC and I wouldn't recommend it.
I was on self assessment for several years, but even as a higher rate tax payer, I was just providing the data that was on my P60.
I was told one year that they didn't need me to continue completing a SA tax form unless my income profile changed.
What probably made the difference is that I had no additional income beyond my main job, did not save significant amounts, nor partake in the stock market (or even anything other than my occupational pension). Everything was on the P60.
I wonder sometimes whether they stop asking for SA tax forms, as it might give (lazy) people like me ideas about how I could decrease my tax burden!
I decided to call it a day and wound up my limited company just before IR35 was expected to kick in (COVID knocked it back, but I was living several time zones away by then). Every year since I have received an automated email asking if I need to fill in a self-assessment, I give the same answer and no one ever responds... until the next email a year later.
"We seem to have systems which are really showing their age where one part of government can't query another"
That's actually a very good thing. There's no reason for them to be interlinked*. The DVLA (say) has no need to access (say) HMRC's systems and vice versa. Joining these all up means unavoidable, intrusive and all-pervasive state monitoring of everything. Next, it will be impossible for all of those government departments to agree on a common set of requirements, use cases or even a problem statement. And that's before we get to the (im)practical deployment issues, overseen by the likes of Crapita, Fushitsu, etc.
* Apart from shovelling tens of billions of taxpayer money at the usual suspects on an IT project that is doomed to fail and can't ever be stopped once it starts: job security and backhanders all round. Who wouldn't want to jump aboard that gravy train?
It's absurd that the DWP can't check people's income from HMRC.
Joining these all up means unavoidable, intrusive and all-pervasive state monitoring of everything.
It is also absurd that having two government departments monitoring bank accounts is deemed better privacy-wise than one government department just ascertaining last year's income level from another government department. That is precisely the alll-pervasive state monitoring you're afraid of due to different government departments not being able to make reasonable queries to each other.
I don't care if the DWP put a checkbox to look up only the relevant data from HMRC on the application form or allow people to attach the relevant paper documentation, either option is fine and I suspect it would be for most people. But the fact that the DWP have developed means tested benefits apparently without a way for them verify income is absurd.
This by the way is why the WFP will only be available for people who are on other benefits now. If they had an easy way to verify income there would be no cut-off at a level which causes hardship for people.
As if that would fix anything. Most welfare fraud is likely to be cash-in-hand payments or collecting disability benefits while being able to work. Access to bank account info will not make much of a difference to that because the undeclared dosh never hits a bank account. And HMRC couldn't find about it either.
Cracking down on welfare fraud is all very well. Provided the methods are reasonable, proportionate and cost-effective. Which can't ever hope to be the case if a new government IT system - outsourced to the likes of Crapita ('natch) - is involved.
However there are far, far bigger frauds against the public purse and nothing gets done about them: tax dodging, PFI scams, Covid loans and PPE procurements, etc. If only the authorities went after billionaire "non doms", google, Amazon, Shitbucks and so on with the same enthusiasm as they go after a single parent who makes a few quid on the side to top up their dole money.
They don't need to know other deposits, they just need to know if someone's income level is above or below £X to check if the means tested benefit applies. Then maybe once the DWP have managed that they could work on pro-rating the benefit according to income level.
This works because any income in other bank accounts will be declared properly. If someone is defrauding then that's another story and the DWP already have access to bank accounts for that... but fraud will be cash-in-hand.
I think that you've spotted the real reason. Firstly, when UK goes cashless HMG will see what other deposits are going in. Secondly, the bit "The bill is also expected to ... protect vulnerable claimants from racking up debt, DWP said." implies that people will be penalise for spending money on anything HMG disapproves of, such as donations to non-profits working on stuff HMG doesn't like.
or making sure that "vulnerable claimants" i.e. anyone who needs to claim social security who isn't already cut off from lines of credit can be cut off completely, so as to make their lives even more wretched and miserable than they already are. The return of the workhouse can't be far off, given that Starmer apparently thinks its 1846 and not 2024....
The problem is that DWP want have the same powers as HMRC ie. It sees itself as an alternative HMRC.
The solution is to merge the financial reporting and collections functions into a single system and organisation. Then DWP merely need to pay money out and inform HMRC collections who then do all the tax and NI recovery, and flagging back to DWP if certain published thresholds are exceeded.
or better yet - Split DWP into: the ministry for work/labour, the ministry for pensions and social security. Fire the payroll of DWP to remove their toxic gestapo wannabe culture, have their managerial filing cabinets and emails gone through to find just how deep and dubious their links to private insurers like Unum is and exactly how much influence on policy Unum has....
Precisely, there's no need to look around people's bank accounts except for fraud. All the DWP needs to do is determine if the last year's income is over £X by comparing with the last year's PAYE figures or self-assessment.
Because tax dodgers are famous for their meticulous tax returns?
But that's what data fetishists do.
It's what they always do, given half a chance to do so.
Note the bias here.
Surveillance by default not suspicion.
Now don't get me wrong. Fraud is real. The biggest was for £53m here
But really, shouldn't internal checks have picked up how many claims were going to the same accounts?
Heaven forbid that the department ask the people who they outsource their IT to (because governments since Thatcher gutted HMG's ability to do it for itself) do some additional work as that could cost them some serious money in charges.
UK law says personal data must be "used in a way that is adequate, relevant and limited to only what is necessary" https://www.gov.uk/data-protection. There are already provisions to allow the reporting or investigation of suspected crimes and this is neccessary. I do not see how this complies with the spirit of the data protection act and imagine any way that the have managed to comply with the letter of the legislation is acrobatic. As noted in the article this seems to automate suspicion and presume guilt. I also don't imagine that the amount recovered would be a patch on what could be gained by improving big firms voluntary compliance in paying tax, closing loopholes and encouraging growth, all things the government in opposition and during the election campaign claimed to want to do .
So many exceptions that are un nerving so hypocritical of the government of a country who introduced ITIL and encourages best practice in industry. Rereading the legislation I guess I should have said compliance with the letter of the law was acrobatic or authoritarian. As there are suggested justifications and then most of the ways a secretary of state can set regulation end with the phrase or in the exercise of authority. I thought Labour like to rule by consent in the public interest not by decree in the self/elite interest.
The opposition (whomever they are at the time) is concerned about peoples rights because that will get them votes, and the party already in power is concerned about more power. It’s just usually not quite so blatant. As a foreign reference, I bring you to Canada’s government, and the Trudeau liberals first term, when they passed Bill C 53, basically a police powers act, that they had initially opposed when it had been pushed by the in-power conservatives just months before.
1.6billion over 5 years breaks down to 320million a year
considering, oh just pick one at this stage, the state of government finances and reckless spending on myriad other "projects" and "plans" that cost many many millions just to think about and put on paper, not even implementation if they even get that far, I am sure the finger could be readily pointed back at the governemtn for their own "Benefit frauds" upon their own people.
For sure, actual benefit fraud should be tracked and tackeled as a mattoer of course too.
HS2?
Ferguson Shipyard Debacle?
Circularity Scotland?
Garden Bridge nonsense?
Brexshit?
The adaptable to CATOBAR carriers that well....aren't....?
Rwanda?
AJAX Infantry Fighting Vehicle? (which will probably kill and disable more British troops than any enemy it will face)
'protect vulnerable claimants from racking up debt'
How is this supposed to work? If peoples overdrafts are too high call them in for a chat to see how the government can help?
Somewhat unlikely.
And I thought most vulnerable claimants only racked up debt when they were sanctioned, i.e. benefits stopped, for breaching one of innumerable petty rules.
I ran a small business from before the merger, until a couple of years after. HM's Inland Revenue were always, helpful, co-operative, and I'd go so far as lenient on some occasions.
HM's Customs, and Excise, bunch of wankers, every single time. I never remember having dealt with you
Going way back (1970s) the local HMRC were accommodating. The supermarket I worked in got a visit and it was deemed the out of date items staff were permitted to take home were a perk that should be accounted for. So one afternoon we took the entire collection of items due to go out of date that evening and deposited it at reception at the local tax office as a gift from us… Th rissue of out of date food was never raised again by the local inspectors…
restricting the data sharing to benefit recipient's accounts as I would have thought if you had a little cash earner on the side you wouldn't let your hard earned anywhere near a bank. If it weren't a cash earner another account, possibly offshore (especially an internet business), under an alias would fly under this radar.
I don't suppose Starmer and co. would be interested in a well tested Robodebt system from Australia's equivalent organisation. Surplus sale price. ;)
Basic banking rules require them to "know their customer".
If they're using other accounts and offshore accounts with intention to do that, that's an entirely different issue to detecting benefit fraud. By definition, they won't "know" about those accounts anyway, so how are they going to know to look at them?
What you need to stop is ANY use of offshore accounts without a full taxpayer ID being registered to the account, and blocking anything that doesn't co-operate with those rules (e.g. I think we killed off Swiss "numbered" accounts, but the same thing happens all over the place).
Strangely that banking law NEVER ends up coming into force.
Banks do know their customers, but there is no mechanism to report dodgy dealings - and I know this as MsDwire has recently retired as a senior bank manager. In their experience, customers often with non-anglicised names have several accounts, all based on a variation of their actual name. Monies are transferred between accounts to keep balances down to a non-suspicious level.
How will any snooping allow these accounts to be assigned to one person? Banking software in general expects names such as "John Smith" and doesn't allow the entry of names where the family name comes first. Apparently, the influx of foreign students each year was a nightmare as they just didn't know which part of their name went where on the form - and unfortunately the staff often didn't know either as there was little to no guidance. The banks need to "globalise" their identifiers to accommodate names correctly, otherwise it is all garbage-in, garbage out. That won't happen anytime soon as there are insufficient Cobol programmers left ...
Please note that I'm not implying "John Smith" can't be a benefit's cheat, nor that it's only "Johnny Foreigner" who's on the take. My point is that there is no mechanism to report any suspicious activity by customers that would help identify such cheats.
"In their experience, customers often with non-anglicised names have several accounts, all based on a variation of their actual name. Monies are transferred between accounts to keep balances down to a non-suspicious level. How will any snooping allow these accounts to be assigned to one person?"
By knowing their customer.
If you're purely going by name alone, you don't know your customer.
If I set up an account, they want to see official government ID, legal names, home addresses, etc.
I don't care what or how their name is written, or if they're using a stage name or an alias. If you don't know that those accounts in different names are the same person, then you don't "know your customer" at all.
True. I had to set up a new account for personal use, at a bank where I have had a current account, a savings account, a mortgage account and a credit card account. The current and credit card accounts have been there for over 45 years.
I had to go to the local branch in person, sign a paper form, show them my passport and two household bills in my name and address, all of which they photocopied.
So it begs the question - how the merry fuck do these scammers get away with opening and emptying bank accounts then disappearing without any way of tracing them ?
Scotland was actually the last place to have anonymous bank accounts, via Scottish Limited Partnerships, which despite only applying to Scotland, was a reserved matter for the Westminster Government.
England also has Limited Partnerships, but English Partnerships, limited or otherwise, can't own property in their own right, it has to be owned directly by the partners. Scottish Partnerships can own property in their own right, in England as well as Scotland.
There is a reason that I've never claimed a benefit, and a reason that in the future for my retirement I want to live as independently of utilities, governments and benefits as possible.
I'm far from a conspiracy theorist, I have absolutely nothing to hide, and I mostly just want to be left alone by large organisations who want to cause me hassle.
But every interaction I have with government is largely negative and I can't imagine being RELIANT on them for something as simple as a pension payment.
I was self-employed for a decade. I gave it up because their processes were largely awful and punishing, and that was with me just declaring income and never bothering to claim expenses or tax deductions.
We have things like universal credit failures, and I've seen the processes behind honest people just trying to get disability living allowance, or jobseeker's allowance, etc. even with the full support of medical staff and other professionals.
Increasingly, I predict the number and scale of interactions I'll have to have with them come retirement is going to grow enormously from my current minimal stance and I'm not looking forward to it. I really don't want to be spending hours on the phone, or filling out myriad (often paper!) forms to do simple things, or having to fight for things I'm obviously entitled to at that point.
At least in employment, I can pretty much do what I like with my money (because "what I like" is always 100% legal) and don't have to justify anything to anyone.
But my interactions with councils are generally poor and I just do the bare minimum to get them to shut up and go away so that I don't have to interact with them. I bought a house with those kinds of things in mind. I have a driveway with a dropped kerb so I don't have to argue about parking with them, things like that. I've seriously considered just not bothering with waste collection and organising a private company to come and collect mine on a date and time convenient to me (where they can walk up my damn driveway and get them themselves, and no penalty if I "get it wrong")
I'm all for regulation, detecting crime, investigating fraud, etc. and quite understand the need for it. But we seem to do it in the worst possible way most of the time - expensive, inefficient, trawls up millions of innocent people, asks people to justify themselves rather than actually prove cases against them, etc. The Post Office scandal and other things show you what happens. That's been going on for decades now, and still the ones who were CLEARLY defrauded of money by the Post Office have no proper compensation for that.
I've decided to just stay out of their way come retirement. I'll live in my little house, drive my little car (as far as I can), pay my bills, and not rely on them for anything (even water utility regulation, electricity market regulation, etc.).
It's a sad state of affairs because it's against most of my political beliefs, but the administration side of government is almost universally a mess and punishes its users and I'm not sure I can be bothered with it any more.
I don't know how close to retirement you are, but you are showing great promise in achieving your obligatory curmudgeonly-old-man status!
I'm in complete agreement with you of course, but as I'm already drawing my pension I have some insights that you probably don't want to hear. Good luck with your mission to keep flying under the radar!
Beer, because I'm retired and can drink whenever I feel like it ...
I was certified grumpy years ago, but I have another 20 years to complete my solar build out (already 50% of the way there in just 2 years), get an atmospheric water generator (powered off the solar, so I can tell the water board to go stick it as well), get an electric car and home charger, and then dial everything down to the bare minimum (e.g. standing charges etc.) where I can retaining them just for redundancy.
Obviously, they'll bring in electricity charging taxes, and toll roads and parking restrictions and a porch tax, and whatever other nonsense they can, but I just need to know I'm isolating myself from whatever I can reasonably do so. If that means drinking water made from the air so my water bill is even cheaper than it already is, so they can't profit from me (but some tech company in China is making a fortune off me), then so be it.
It's not that I'll be able to live entirely off-grid in modern Britain (and I don't really stand a chance of getting elsewhere nowadays to try that), but the fact that I'm doing something about it and doing it myself rather than dealing with their broken systems that I'm paying for is enough for my own peace of mind.
Like when I moved into a flat that had basically no broadband - I refused to pay for a 1Mbps line, so instead I had a 4G system instead. Cost less, worked better, and my money went to a place I approve of that were delivering a service that worked, rather than a pathetic excuse of an incumbent telecoms provider.
If they impose restrictions on me, I'll find a way around some other way. Whether that's buying a garage / parking spot for myself, or having a company collect my bins, or banking with a particular service, or not claiming some benefit that's not worth the cost, or whatever it may be. I don't care about "hurting them", I just care about "having hassles only of my own choice".
Good luck with that.
The battery pack replacement costs aresteep
I can't certainly understand your PoV but you nicely illustrate the massive effort needed to tell "utilities" suppliers (in the broadest possible sense) in the UK to f**k off.
Maybe if we put a bit more effort into regulating them we'd see a bit more result across the board.
Fun research question. Why don't all UK govt regulators (most, if not all of which handle for-profit business) don't seem to have a set of core powers.
Like, for example, "No staff bonuses (to C-suites or anyone else) or dividends paid until all imposed fines and court settlements are paid*"
*What's a regulators job? IMHO it's the protection of a)The customers b)The fairness of the market. IOW Not any specific operator in that market.
The social security system currently costs the taxpayer almost £10 billion a year, and since the pandemic, a total of £35 billion, according to the government.
so who's going to enforce this snooper's charter. And how are they going to make it work? Let's guess, Capita gets a contract and suddenly "the social security system currently costs the taxpayer almost £11 billion a year"...
"staff will be well trained" -- Yeh right,
Safeguarding... how do you protect a mum with a new born baby who has literacy and numeracy issues, who is struggling to try and survive financially when your "well trained" member of staff sits in an office in a city 100 miles away and has a target to deal with x people in any given days.
Honest to God midwives have been facing this issue for decades, and mostly that's a 1:1 face to face relationship. that puts pressure on the health system.
"This is the DWP who declare someone fit for work."
Based on a telephone assesment done by an unintelligible, bored, probably WFH, high wage scouse Crapita employee who is obviously not listening, merely ticking the relevant boxes on his data entry screen to meet his "quota".
Fuckers.
They were still harassing me about my gf being reassessed six months after she died. They knew she was dead (not least as I used their own system when it happened) and I'd told them multiple times but they wouldn't relent, until they eventually sent a letter saying a decision had been made, but not what their decision was nor even what it was about. Atos predictably joined in with the bastardiness and their inter-personal skills were the expected bored-sounding "not our problem to deal with".
UBI, adjusted for disability needs.
There you go, I have stripped about 2/3rds of the workforce needed to administer the civil service, improved financial security for everyone, for example, those that might want to explore an entrepreneurial venture but cannot afford to gamble on paying the bills... While reducing overall cost to run.
Why on earth is this concept so hard to get across.
Navigating the complex pile of benefits and credits as they are is a full time job in of itself, and that speaks volumes as to the blob of administrators driving it that could be out doing useful work instead of bureaucracy.
Why on earth is this concept so hard to get across.
Because this is not in the spirit of Keynesian economics.
those that might want to explore an entrepreneurial venture
These people are too valuable for big corporations to be given chance at creating their own business. They need to be employed, that's why successive corrupt governments make small business more and more difficult.
"Because this is not in the spirit of Keynesian economics."
Yes, it is. Keynesian economics favours government intervention and, correctly, states that the economy is demand driven. UBI is both these things. Government intervenes to provide a basic level of income to all, giving more people more discretionary cash to spend and so stimulate the economy.
You missed the purpose of government intervention, which is to increase demand and stimulate the economy. UBI is contrary to this, as it simplifies the system and reduces the demand for the structures in place to manage it. While it might result in people having more money in their pockets, it doesn't guarantee they will spend it. Meanwhile, the corporations supporting the current system would be left without work, making no profit, and forced to lay people off.
The state pension is NOT a benefit. I have paid full tax and NI contributions, on employment, self employment and other income for 43 years to date and will have paid the same for another 6 years until I actually get to 67 which I think is when I can get my state pension.
The minimum payment period for NI is 38 years after which you are eligible for the full state pension. By then I will have paid an additional 11 YEARS of conrtibutions for fuck all extra.
Anyone who tells me my state pension is a benefit will get their fucking head caved in.
"The minimum payment period for NI is 38 years after which you are eligible for the full state pension"
I don't believe that is (completely) correct.
Firstly it depends on which pension you get, the "old" State Pension (reach pension age before 2016), or the New State Pensionension after that
Regarding the previous State Pension: https://www.gov.uk/state-pension/how-much-you-get
Regarding the New State Pension, The *previous* Labour government reduced the number of qualifying years to 30 (down from 35 AFAIK) from 6th April 2010. Then the Tories increased it back to 35 qualifying years (not sure in which year). It is mentioned here: https://www.gov.uk/new-state-pension/what-youll-get
Except it's in the welfare budget. 42% (£111b) of the welfare budget to be exact. UC is 1% (£2b) yet that's where all the fury gets directed.*
You have paid for the pension of other people while you worked, and when you retire they will pay your pension. That's the system, you will draw a benefit on retirement that is labelled State Pension. Just because you are upset about benefits claimants doesn't mean you'll not be one at that point.
And this is the real issue, people refuse to admit they draw a benefit from the state and instead get angry about it. Think yourself lucky, state pension is the only benefit that the government gives any sort of (half decent) rise to yearly. The rest are left with the scraps and any rise is incidental.
*ONS stats for How the welfare budget is spent. Though it's slightly outdated so will be more on pensions now.
The Code of Practice will have all sorts of comforting phrases in it - but will not be legally binding The actual text of the bill will ensure that any bank account can be opened on request of a surprisingly large list of public-sector bodies. Anyone remember the "authorized body" list for RIPA? It was enormous!
How about protecting vulnerable claimants from debt caused by the government overpaying them then demanding the money back after it's spent? Despite multiple queries from the claimant, each time the government assured them that the payment was correct.
Or how about tackling errors where the DWP underpays, allowing people to claim what they should have been paid?
The current law is all overpayments have to be repaid even if it was clearly the DWP's fault. And no retroactive claims for underpayments.
I work, and live overseas, my mother is on pension credits, I send her a modest sum every month, and she was already petrified that the DWP would find out, BEFORE this shitshow was mentioned :(
I guess it's Western Union if this ever sees the light of day.
And, also one more reason to use cash. Although at 76 she doesn't like keeping cash in her purse
> Although Although at 76 she doesn't like keeping cash in her purse at 76 she doesn't like keeping cash in her purse
At 85, she will find that visiting the bank becomes a hassle, so suddenly it’s a once a month visit…
Most of my life I carried less than £50 in cash, discovered my elderly aunt routinely carried nearly five times that… basically taxi’s are expensive, but so convenient as the (regular) driver will pack the shopping into the car and carry it into the house, and wait outside the post office whilst you get some stamps etc.
Looks like another example of the naivety of this new government being taken advantage of by the modern-day feudal barons in the DWP - similarly to those in the Treasury that got the WFA removal back on the agenda. The ethos and 'corporate' culture of the DWP is pure evil and something needs to be done about it. Sadly pitchforks and bonfires will be of little use, but they are about all that the beaten-down population of this benighted country has left.
If you were to commit benefit fraud
You certainly would not be paying your wage / I’ll gotten gains in to the bank
That would create an audit trail with red flags everywhere
Just go to a monied area of the UK go into Starbucks or Costa and watch who pays with card and who uses cash
The wealthy use cash as it is untraceable
The money would be better spent on making the benefit fraud-reporting website fit for purpose. I reported someone who was working cash in hand whilst claiming UC and housing benefit, also subletting her rented flat on Airb+b, also rinsing her ex-husband by claiming she was poor as a church mouse, and was (no doubt still is) transferring her cash to her birth country to invest in property. The reporting form had ridiculously low character limits in each field and would only allow very basic punctuation marks, and not : or /, so I couldn't even give the URL for her AB+B advert.
The disallowing the web links in that form is normal IT security and data cleansing/data validation as they are or would be abused to send phishing emails.
This happened to our form on our site for a while which I pointed out would happen. Because no data validation on our feedback form was ever done. So I then had to manually check the replies that were all clearly phishing scams.
So-called New Labour also had this authoritarian streak. Remember ID cards, which Sir Tony is still banging on about (now rebranded as digital identity). I think Labour approaches this from a socialist perspective of father knows best, whereas the Tories are simply jackbooted bastards (massive generalisation, but not really).
Net result is the same, whatever civil liberties we have left are constantly being attacked.
I know two people in our street committing council tax fraud, yet fuck all is done to them. Both claiming single person allowance despite their partners living with them. One even having the cheek to ring and have a rant at revs and bens over a council tax bill he got. No one picked up and threw it back at him "Hang on. I thought you weren't registered as living there anymore".
They'd have caught the tax fraud there and then if they'd bothered to look into it.
So why is having access to a person bank details going to help. Most committing the fraud do cash in hand jobs so they won't then put it in the bank.
There would also be safeguarding measures to protect vulnerable benefits claimants. "Staff will be trained to the highest standards on the appropriate use of any new powers, and we will introduce new oversight and reporting mechanisms to monitor these new powers. DWP will not have access to people's bank accounts and will not share their personal information with third parties," the department added in a statement.
cheap fix is to pay benefits to a government benefits account, then claimants can use a benefits card like a credit card, bonus is to only permit spending that benefits money on approved items like food, utilities, clothing etc, limited spending on alcohol & cigarettes.
No cash so no drugs or other illicit items
it will cut fraud but not illuminate it, but government will know how much they are providing claimants and can limit totals so a claimant may be entitled to £100k but if the total limit is £30k government can ensure that's all they get.
additionals can be claimants can pay utilities and rent direct from that benefit account like a normal account. With no or limited access to cash & no bank transfer mechanism it'll deter low effort & casual fraud.
The right has an obsession with going after the poor and people on benefits. While in reality the largest tax dodgers are the rich people that fund and are members of this political parties. This tax dodgers should all be in jail.
Studies also show that just paying people money with no string attached is beneficent to the people and the society. This expensive monitoring system of the people on benefits provides no profits and only costs. Fraud on benefits is almost none existence because the amounts that people get on benefits is so low that its not worth the work and hassle.
Quote: "...banks to constantly spy on benefits recipients...."
DWP statistic: "...12.6 million people receiving the State Pension at February 2023..."
....and 18.3 million people receiving various other benefits....
(See: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-benefits-statistics-august-2023/dwp-benefits-statistics-august-2023)
So....spying now to be standard against over 30 million people....not quite half the population....
Really?
You only have to look at the Post Office and Horizon debacle to see the future of such an ill thought out algorithm. I can see the court cases multiplying exponentially over the coming years as the Government are sued for privacy issues and faulty algorithm computing systems. This is nothing more than an attack on the privacy of the vulnerable in society? I ask each person would they like the Government to have the power to access their private bank accounts with the only evidence being a blip whether true or false from a computer system which as with Horizon they will claim to be infallible?
I do love how people have forgotten the single biggest "benefit" bill in the entire state, namely the state pension tend also to be the ones whinging about "freeloaders".
At a princely sum of £221 / week, one could afford quarter of the rent of a London bedsit and have nothing leftover. Or perhaps, having bought lunch for a week, maybe enough for a closet. And that's the BIGGEST benefits bill, by far. So that being the case, what do you think the so-called "freeloaders" are getting...
The concept of the triple lock wrapped around that 221 is potty when it's not even remotely enough to support a modest standard of living UNLESS you own a property and/or have significant assets elsewhere already.
The net effect is that those good people that don't have anything extra then have to be shuffled into the systems of council housing, social care or otherwise; all of which are also similarly starved.
There are about 33m of working age on these islands as of today; out of a population of 70m. We have considerably more people taking out of the system than putting in; and proportionally, the stuff going in is generally less than what is being taken out. Even if unemployment was reduced to zero (which is actually a bad thing, because inflation) the working population would only rise to about 36 or 37m. Given combined income tax and NI of somewhere between 20 to 40% (depending on earnings), less than half the "income" of the state is left available to prop up EVERYTHING else that government and "benefits claimants - namely, pensioners" think they want.
People moan about immigration, but what more could you ask for than people entering directly into the working population without the up front overheads to prop up this ailing financial structure?
I detest Kemi Badenoch thoroughly, though her recent comments on about people "earning" via government is intriguing. She wasn't talking about claimants (though that's how the papers presented it, of course, such is PR). She was talking about corporations that rely on government contracts to earn income; government-lead supply chains and so forth. I mean, PFI is probably the most obvious of these. Taxing and selling stuff internally generates turnover but not income. This is a fair comment, but to exist on a world stage as an exporter we either need A) decent trading terms (HAH sawn off our own arm for some stupid slogan on the side of a bus) and B) to be price competitive externally for stuff people want.
On B), selling Jags and Land Rovers are all well and good (no matter how crap they are), but it's not enough to make bank. Raw material costs are high (not least energy, which is itself blatantly exploited by middlement) and staff wages are high (because property is even more stupid than energy costs have gone).
Folks would not generally complain about higher tax if their remaining salary was adequate to have what they need. Nationwide Solutions range from "ostrich mode" to "complete reformation of the state". In the meantime, the national debt will continue to rise along with the failures, as long as there is no concerted effort to rebalance.
I'm probably somewhere over on the latter scale... And definitely NOT of the reform variety.
>” People moan about immigration, but what more could you ask for than people entering directly into the working population without the up front overheads to prop up this ailing financial structure?”
The real problem is the daft way government has gone about matters. As you note fundamentally the UKs problem is having sufficient people of working age, in a few decades the problem will be resolved as the bulge generation dies. What the government has done with its simplistic policy is to massively increase the non working population, both currently and I to the future by allowing temporary (migrant) workers to settle, bring their (young non working families), become residents and retire here. Also being younger they will have a greater tendency to have families and thus increase the size of the young non working population - which is now significantly larger than it was in circa 1963 ( peak baby boom) all due as ONS notes to migration…
Retirement age to rise again, for sure. Sooner rather than later not a terrible idea. Although realistically this is only penalising those not able to support themselves already, and so will be diminishing returns for high political cost.
Depending on your flavour of conspiracy theory we've already tried population reduction by disease...
Young migrants will become workers soon enough, I have no particular problem there. But us lot in good jobs buggering off at 58 will kill tax revenues otherwise used to prop up the rest of the state pension crowd.
Budget day isn't far away. I am not holding my breath for a budget that will genuinely acknowledge the problems.
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