When it comes to proposed legislation, most data protection commentary has understandably been on the Data (Use and Access) Bill, but it’s important also to note some of the provisions of the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill, introduced in the Commons on 25 January.
The abandoned Tory Data Protection and Digital Information Bill would have conferred powers on the DWP to inspect bank accounts for evidence of fraud. To his credit, the Information Commissioner John Edwards, in evidence given on that earlier Bill, had warned about the “significant intrusion” those powers would have created, and that he had not seen evidence to assure him that they were proportionate. This may be a key reason why they didn’t reappear in the DUA Bill.
The Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill does, however, at clause 74 and schedule 3, propose that the DWP will be able to require banks to search their own data to identify whether recipients of Universal Credit, ESA and Pension Credit meet criteria for investigation for potential fraud.
But such investigative powers are only as good as the data, and the data governance, in place. And as the redoubtable John Pring of Disability News Service reports, many disabled activists are rightly concerned about the potential for damaging errors. In evidence to the Bill Committee one activist noted that “even if there was an error rate of just 0.1 per cent during this process, that would still mean thousands of people showing up as ‘false positives’, even if it just examined those on means-tested benefits”.
The Bill does not appear to confer any specific role on the Information Commissioner in this regard, although there will be an independent reviewer, and – again, creditably – the Commissioner has said that although he could not be the reviewer himself, he would expect to be involved.
It is worth also reading the concerns of the Public Law Project, contained in written evidence to the Bill committee.
The views in this post (and indeed most posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
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