The Final Remnant, Too Precious To Relinquish

The great Paul Knaggs writes:

The UK government’s newly unveiled bank account monitoring scheme targeting benefit claimants provides yet another example of how policies and systems disproportionately burden vulnerable populations.

This dystopian intrusion into personal finances deals another blow to struggling groups already reeling amid a prolonged cost-of-living crisis, not of their making.

While the stated aim of detecting fraud may hold superficial appeal, the scope reveals a distorted set of priorities that sacrifice privacy upon the altar of public penny-pinching – while turning a blind eye toward far more egregious financial crimes. Functionally, it serves to treat all who rely upon benefit support, even an old age pension, as latent criminals undeserving of basic dignity or trust.

Considering that people claiming out-of-work benefits sit at 5.4m, the DWP identified just 11,000 cases of benefit fraud annually – around 0.2% of claimants. Yet rather than strengthen transparency and accountability among elite circles of inherited wealth and statuses shielding billions overseas, the government marshals more resources to scrutinise how the unemployed, disabled or retired spend their paltry allowance.

This is yet another instance of a data-driven assault in what can only be labelled “class war”. People relentlessly prosecuted by an establishment ever more equipped to disempower those with the least while coddling corrupt concentrations of economic power.

As critics note, true financial transparency would demand beginning from the top – starting with MPs themselves. But there is no accompanying crackdown on the second jobs, undeclared payments and conflicts of interest marring sectors of Britain’s legislature.

Once more we see the most vulnerable forced to surrender privacy for scraps while their social betters guard secrecy as an ironclad privilege. Those looking upwards for accountability may as well seek stars in the daylight sky.

Jenny Jones nailed it in a speech in the House of Lords:

“Look at the government’s plans to actually spy on the bank accounts of those receiving benefits… It really is a new low in this government’s constant vile behaviour.

“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.

“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? That does seem to make sense, doesn’t it? Just test the system before we use it on other people.”

The Big Picture

In the bigger picture, the monitoring scheme continues a trend of bleeding compassion from British civic life while resuscitating and galvanising the apparatuses of punitive oversight and control.

Rights to privacy, protest and civic participation wane while capacities for surveillance and criminalisation seemingly expand by the day. Hearts may harden just as the scope of intrusion and regulation grows ever more intimate.

Sir Stephen Timms, Labour MP and former Chief Secretary to the Treasury stated: “This measure will give the Government the right to inspect the bank account of anyone who claims a State Pension. So all of us actually, every single one of us, this measure will give the Government the right to look into our bank account at some point during our lives without suspecting that we have ever done anything wrong, without telling us that they are doing it.”

But let us harbour no illusions – we should expect no meaningful pushback from Sir Keir Starmer or his cadre of lawyers masquerading as an opposition party. This is precisely the sort of authoritarian overreach Starmer’s Rule of Lawyers faction will not only embrace, but expand should they seize the reins of power.

Just as Tory governments erode civil liberties and entrench inequality, so too would Starmer’s New Labour double down on the worst excesses of the surveillance state, ever at the beck and call of corporate power.

With a lack of opposition, the burden now falls to individual MPs: will they reject the stigmatising overreach, or tacitly bless the rough Beast slouching nearer?

It will be the manner in which MPs respond that sets the tone for just how profoundly Big Brother will reach into daily affairs, plucking at the most sensitive threads of individual autonomy and self-determination.

For the most vulnerable already stripped of so much, basic financial privacy could be the final remnant too precious to relinquish without corroding dignity beyond recognition. For many, the move epitomises a creeping authoritarian drift with yet more digital surveillance permeating daily life.

It cannot be overstated this is reminiscent of Orwell’s dystopia. Clause 34 grants the government the authority to examine the bank accounts of individuals claiming a state pension, affecting every one of us. It bestows upon the government the power to scrutinise the bank accounts of each citizen at some juncture in our lives, devoid of any suspicion of wrongdoing and without notifying us of such actions.

With the establishment political class largely united in their disdain for the vulnerable, only a groundswell of protest from below has hope of throwing sand in the gears of their dystopian designs.

As rights to privacy, protest and civic participation are steadily suffocated, the need for new models of bottom-up, grassroots democracy becomes increasingly urgent. For those discarded by the powerful as mere “useless eaters”, the fight to defend their humanity may rest not in the hollow halls of Parliament, but on the streets, the picket lines, and all trenches where the people themselves unite to reclaim the promise of self-government by securing self-empowerment.

This is a struggle that the captured Labour Party has long abandoned; it now falls to ordinary citizens to carry forth.

Speaking for the SNP, Patrick Grady said the Bill would grant the DWP powers to “proactively, regularly, and at scale, and on a speculative basis carry out checks on the bank accounts and finances of claimants.”

Labour frontbencher Sir Chris Bryant had attempted to see the Bill returned to a committee for further scrutiny due to concerns about a large number of additions the Government had made to it. But the Commons rejected this 275 to 209, majority 66.

The Bill later received a third reading by 269 votes to 31, majority 238, and will undergo further scrutiny in the House of Lords at a later date.

This could be a pivotal moment testing the boundaries of intrusion that the British public is prepared to tolerate in the emerging digital panopticon – and whether notions of personal dignity and liberty still retain any sanctity.