Erosion of privacy for the sake of trying to claw back £320m a year. I doubt it will even recoup the costs to administer the snooping.

"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"

bwahaha. This joke gets better every time they tell it.

What the convenience of the “cashless society” is doing to the “unbanked” should matter more to social libertarians than it seems to.

Govtech and adtech both eventually granting themselves "perfect information" on a digitized citizenry in the name of safety and profit are both trending to inevitable given today's systemic incentives.

> Included are provisions that would ensure banks and other financial institutions share data which the government says could identify benefit fraud

I wonder what the false positive rate would be. Joint accounts, youth accounts and debt could cause a lot of statistical mess.

So if you don’t get any benefits then your account won’t be monitored right? Right?

We’ve already learned in a few months that this lot are as corrupt and authoritarian as any previous lot we have had.