Category Archives: DWP

January 26, 2025 · 9:45 am

Consent is not the only basis

In 2017 I attended a free event run by a “GDPR consultancy”. The presenter confidently told us that we were going to have to get consent from customers in order to process their personal data. One attendee said they worked at the DWP, so how were they going to get consent from benefits claimants who didn’t want to disclose their income, to which the presenter rather awkwardly said “I think that’s one you’ll have to discuss with your lawyers”. Another attendee, who was now most irritated that he’d taken time out from work for this, could hold his thoughts in no longer, and rudely announced that this was complete nonsense.

That attendee was the – much ruder in those days – 2017 version of me.

I never imagined (although I probably should have done) that eight years on the same nonsense would still be spouted.

Just as the Data Protection Act 2018 did not implement the GDPR in the UK (despite the embarrassing government page that until recently, despite people raising it countless times, said so) just as the GDPR does not limit its protections to “EU citizens”, so GDPR and the UK GDPR do not require consent for all processing.

Anyone who says so has not applied a smidgeon of thought or research to the question, and is probably taking content from generative AI, which, on the time-honoured principle of garbage-in, garbage-out, has been in part trained on the existing nonsense. To realise why it’s garbage, they should just start with the DWP example above and work outwards from there.

Consent is one of the six lawful bases, any one or more of which can justify processing. No one basis is better than or takes precedence over the other.

To those who know this, I apologise for having to write it down, but I want to have a sign to tap for any time I see someone amplifying the garbage on LinkedIn.

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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Filed under Data Protection, Data Protection Act 2018, DWP, GDPR, Let's Blame Data Protection, UK GDPR

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December 6, 2024 · 7:01 am

Banks to be required to snoop on customers’ accounts

[reposted from my LinkedIn account]

A recently announced “DWP Fraud, Error and Debt Bill” will propose obligations on banks and financial institutions to “examine their own data sets to highlight where someone may not be eligible for the benefits they are being paid” and share relevant information with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).

This appears to be a new approach to the broad powers which would have been conferred on the DWP under clause 131 and schedule 11 of the shelved Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. Under those provisions the DWP would have been able to require banks and financial institutions to give general access to customer accounts (rather than on a targeted basis) for the purpose of identifying benefit fraud. Although the proposed powers were subject to a fair deal of criticism on the grounds of disproportionality, they remained in the final version of the bill which would almost certainly have been enacted if Mr Sunak had called a later election.

The DWP Fraud, Error and Debt Bill (which has not yet been introduced into Parliament but will be this session – so probably by Spring 2025) will propose an “Eligibility Verification measure” which, in figurative terms, will result in server side snooping on accounts (i.e. by banks themselves) rather than the demand-side snooping the previous bill would have introduced.

We will have to wait for the details, but one thing is certain – this will require a lot of algorithmic automation, no doubt AI-driven, and the potential for errors will need to be addressed and mitigated.

It will also, surely, be a significant cost burden on banks and financial institutions. Whilst it’s generally hard to muster much sympathy in those circumstances, here we must consider the risk that the lowest-cost, highest-efficiency models which will be adopted may be the least protective of customers’ banking privacy and data protection rights.

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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Filed under Data Protection, data sharing, DWP, Privacy

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December 18, 2022 · 10:48 am

ICO investigated potential FOI criminal offences by government departments

Under section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) a person commits a criminal offence if – after someone has made a request for information to a public authority, and would have been entitled to disclosure of that information – he or she

alters, defaces, blocks, erases, destroys or conceals any record held by the public authority, with the intention of preventing the disclosure by that authority of all, or any part, of the information to the communication of which the applicant would have been entitled

This is the only section of FOIA which carries a criminal penalty. It is very rarely invoked: since FOIA commenced in January 2005, there has been just one successful prosecution brought by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) (and, as far as I know, only one other, unsuccessful, prosecution).

One reason for the lack of cases is that the ICO can only bring a prosecution within six months of the offence occurring. This has been identified for many years as an issue which should be addressed (but successive governments have declined to do so).

Nonetheless, a recent FOIA disclosure by the ICO reveals that in the last few years potential section 77 offences by government departments have been investigated. The request, made via the public WhatDoTheyKnow platform, was for information on “all Section 77 investigations carried out regardless of outcome for all Government departments”. In response, the ICO disclosed that

we have opened the following cases with regard to allegations of s77 allegations against Government Departments:
PCB/0013/2018 – MoJ IC/506/2020 – DWP IC/0549/2020 – Cabinet Office INV/0950/2021 – Cabinet Office.

This appears to suggest the existence of four separate investigations. In response to a request for further comment the ICO press office stated to me that none of the cases was still open, but declined to say any more. This seems to confirm that no proceedings were brought as a result of the investigations, but it is not possible to speculate on the reasons why. Nor are details available as to the circumstances under which the investigations were made.

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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Filed under access to information, Cabinet Office, DWP, Freedom of Information, Information Commissioner, Ministry of Justice, section 77

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August 9, 2021 · 9:12 am

Journalist has to seek pro bono support to enforce subject access request

My firm Mishcon de Reya is acting for John Pring, stalwart editor of Disability News Service, who has been seeking access to his personal data from DWP for more than a year. The ICO upheld his complaint but (see this blog, passim) said it wouldn’t take steps to require DWP to comply.

More here, and here.

As a result of the latest letter, and media coverage, ICO has said it is reopening the case.

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Filed under access to information, DWP, GDPR, human rights, Information Commissioner, subject access, UK GDPR

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