On May 7th, the government tabled a motion as part of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill that will enable them to have unfettered access to anyone’s bank account in the UK. No longer will your banking details be private as, at the drop of a hat, the government can order any bank to give them access to your accounts.

If you are not highly alarmed by this then l doubt your sanity.

The sanctity of our finances is paramount to a free and democratic society and NO-ONE should be able to access such details without our express permission. But this Bill will allow them to delve into all your accounts at any time they choose. If l thought this was right in any way, l would move to Beijing.

They are cloaking this as their need to see if welfare claimants are fairly claiming benefits. But if you are taken in by that bullshit, then you deserve such a government.

They ‘claim’ that they will only spy on the disabled, sick, caregivers, jobseekers, landlords AND ANY OTHER ASSOCIATES. They can also spy on anyone connected to any of the above such as parents, partners, landlords AND OTHER ASSOCIATES.

There have always been powers in place to look at one’s bank accounts IF you are suspected by the police of fraud, and that is right. However, this Bill, under the words ‘ANY OTHER ASSOCIATES’ means they will be able to go into any bank account without your knowledge. One day you will get a letter asking you to justify where that £250 deposit just came from AND they are going to use AI to do it. There will be another Post Office Horizon scandal coming up as they prosecute people for not declaring money they have in their account, leading to wrongful prosecutions, financial ruin and reputational damage.

Why? Because they are so inept that they cannot work out who they are paying welfare to – especially when it’s those who should not be receiving it. But that’s their job - pay to those that need it, and not to those skivers that don’t. A Bill like this is the largest of hammers to crack the smallest of nuts, and all because they are incompetent and can’t do the job.

We already suffer working our entire lives and paying taxes on all of it – and then we get clobbered again when we die with Inheritance Tax. The government, whether it’s this one or the next as they are all as bad – just a new cast of awful characters – are so dreadfully inefficient with our money, that they need more to oil the wheels. And this is their next wheeze.

A letter signed by 20 MPs and Lords, and sent to the government in April warns that this Bill would require banks to “sift through tens of millions of bank accounts to identify people in the welfare system, around 40% of the population,” and it warns that: “Searching for such signals without reasonable grounds for suspicion would reverse the well-established presumption of innocence.”

The letter says: “We note the tragic events of the Post Office Horizon scandal in which innocent people suffered wrongful prosecutions, financial ruin and reputational damage following data used from faulty software in algorithmic systems. We cannot condone powers that risk replicating this disaster on a much broader scale with vulnerable people, many of whom live on the poverty line.”

Ten million pensioners who receive the state pension, as well as welfare payment recipients, such as mothers who receive children’s benefits directly, will be among those whose personal accounts will be secretly scanned to check for welfare fraud under plans that have been described by senior politicians as ‘a snoopers’ charter’.

Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, described the move as ‘dangerously authoritarian’. She said it would treat millions of innocent pensioners, disabled people, parents and carers ‘like criminals’, intrude on the wider population’s financial privacy and reverses the ‘British presumption of innocence’. Ms Carlo added that the ‘mass algorithmic surveillance’ of the public risked a miscarriage of justice similar to that which occurred to staff working for the Post Office, and was likely to recoup only 3% of the
annual amount lost to fraud.

Furthermore, the group claims these powers will likely breach Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which gives Britons the right to privacy without Government interference. The civil liberties organisation suggests the DWP’s proposed new powers
could expose people’s locations, movements, opinions, medical information and impact freedom of expression, though the DWP disputes this strongly.

And as we know, if the banks don’t like something they see, they can de-bank you.

This shocking Bill will remove a huge swathe of freedom from UK citizens, and is the very thin end of a very thick wedge that will follow, putting us in servitude to a careless, incompetent and hugely wasteful Big Brother government – what we spend our money on and why.

Is this a world you want to live in? And if you cannot believe that such an intrusive bill will get through, we thought that about the Investigatory Powers Bill – that passed and now the government can look at ANY social media post, telephone call or email you have sent in the last 12 months, on demand from the service supplier.

Whatever you do, scream, shout, protest and demonstrate about this before they ram it through – or it is end of the UK as we know it.

One good thing to come out of the shock election announcement is that the Conservatives failed to get this Bill through in time but be alert as l am quite sure Labour will try to bring it back.