Dwp checking what you spend your benefits on

Spoonie_Turtle

MeteredOut said:

In my experience "reading in the press" without a source often means "saw it on social media", which contains *lots* of fake news.

To be fair reading it in the actual press is rarely any better these days.

singhini

I'm still waiting for the OP to provide the link 

2 mins after the initial post someone did ask   (have you got a link to this press item?)
Half an hour later OP came back to post again but provided no link.

Muttleythefrog

la531983 said:

At the risk of being controversial it seems fair enough to me if you are spending taxpayers money that they might actually perform some due diligence on what it was being spent on. I appreciate this opinion wont be universally popular on here.

I very much doubt taxpayers would be happy to pay even more taxes for such a general operation...lol... the staff resources required to interrogate what claimants are spending on and based on what criteria (that in itself could be enormously complicated and for staff who are often very unworldly and inexperienced as UC engagements show day in day out) sounds like a hole in the head for taxpayers and is never likely to happen other than in very select cases.

They do sometimes ask in reviews on Universal Credit but frankly often the questions are silly or based on ignorance of the UC staff such as "what is this payment to O2 for ?" or "you sent £1.35 to someone called x what was it for ?".. "Who is Harvey Nichols?"... and seem more a result of lack of other questions to ask to show they're carrying out some sort of scrutiny. Unless there is suspicion of deprivation of capital to increase or retain benefits then really there's nothing of interest for them. My estranged wife has just been reviewed for UC... they asked what the regular small payments in were regarding which is fair enough.. and same regarding cash payments in... they did not ask about the £5k payment made out to HMRC which was by far the biggest transaction over the period covered... and they did not ask about any spending. They asked her if her Trading212 account provided any regular income - she pointed out she only has an ISA with them of which they have the recent statements... it took a stupid amount of explaining that this was simply a savings account with a better interest rate than the bank hence the movements of any significant monies in bank to it.

In the end people can spend their monies on anything legal they like... if that means blowing it at the bookmakers so be it... unsurprisingly some getting benefits include those who cannot manage their money or have addictions. Deprivation of capital is the only issue really on the table... so if someone has £20k in savings and suddenly has the urge for a cruise of £18k or a Sports car costing similar they may consider that DoC.

Spendless

I read it too but I cant remember where. 🙈 The explanation from a comment was very much like the above reply. UC (inexperienced?) staff asking about a payment I think to a phone provider - something like that. Nothing to worry about anyway. 

sgthammer

There's benefits legislation going through Parliament at the moment that will give DWP the right to view claimants' bank accounts directly without notification. It's not law yet, but there was a good deal of press coverage at second reading a couple of months ago, which also quite reasonably called attention to the powers the department already has to e.g. suspend payments until the claimant supplies "further information" in the form of bank statements etc.

OP might be a little late to the party, but came to this board for clarification regarding legitimate concerns that shouldn't be dismissed as "fake news" for want of a citation.

kaMelo

Without citing where they read it no one can clarify anything for the OP as no one knows what they actually read or who wrote it.

HillStreetBlues

sgthammer said:

There's benefits legislation going through Parliament at the moment that will give DWP the right to view claimants' bank accounts directly without notification. It's not law yet, but there was a good deal of press coverage at second reading a couple of months ago, which also quite reasonably called attention to the powers the department already has to e.g. suspend payments until the claimant supplies "further information" in the form of bank statements etc.

OP might be a little late to the party, but came to this board for clarification regarding legitimate concerns that shouldn't be dismissed as "fake news" for want of a citation.

That is incorrect.
The DWP will have no direct access to the accounts, Banks will be required to sent certain info to the DWP if they are on Income based ESA, PC or UC. The main reason for this is to flag up any accounts with over £16k in them. The banks aren't allowed to send the DWP transactions details and if banks supply more info that is legally required they can be fined.
If this does flag up for possible fraud then the DWP can apply to have direct access to accounts (which they can do currently).

Muttleythefrog

sgthammer said:

There's benefits legislation going through Parliament at the moment that will give DWP the right to view claimants' bank accounts directly without notification. It's not law yet, but there was a good deal of press coverage at second reading a couple of months ago, which also quite reasonably called attention to the powers the department already has to e.g. suspend payments until the claimant supplies "further information" in the form of bank statements etc.

OP might be a little late to the party, but came to this board for clarification regarding legitimate concerns that shouldn't be dismissed as "fake news" for want of a citation.

As per HSB you are incorrect. They've said what I intended to say. You need to look at what actual information would be exchanged. And as they say the DWP at transactional level would need a fraud investigation (or of course the claimant to supply same voluntarily). 

Clarification has been given to the Op that this there is no routine ability or resource for DWP to scrutinise what claimants are spending in transactions on accounts and they're entitled to spend legally as they see fit with the caveat of DoC issue... but there are reviews standard and otherwise where bank statements are requested and they may be asked about transactions. Unfortunately fake news is a decent description of what is the habit for simple engagement popularity of so called journalistic entities to drive misinformation or alarm. We're still getting enquiries on what date the cost of living payments this year will be, when they were long since ended, all thanks to these 'news outlets'.