The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) could be allowed to look through bank accounts to see where you spend your money under new plans to tackle benefit fraud.

The DWP is currently working on legislative measures to help reduce levels of fraud, error and debt in the benefits system. This was initially set out in the May 2022 policy paper "Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System".

Some of the potential measures include allowing DWP investigators to access and collect third-party data from banks to see where claimants are spending their money and allow investigators to execute search and seizure orders - so to be able to come into a claimant's home and take away phones and laptops. Agents could also be given the power to make arrests rather than having to call in the police.

The DWP has just published the results of a public consultation into the plans. The research aimed to explore the acceptability of these potential powers to help inform future policy development, assess communication approaches and build the evidence base on fraud, error and debt. This survey consisted of 2,127 people and of that 618 were benefit claimants.

The results revealed that more than half (52%) of those surveyed found the proposal of collecting information about where claimants are spending money to be acceptable. Overall, 62% saw fraud and error in the welfare benefits system as a big problem, with 18% seeing it as a very big problem - only 3% of respondents did not see it as a problem at all.

Nearly 40% of survey respondents believed that around half of incorrect benefit claims were a result of dishonesty, while 31% thought that "most" were due to dishonesty. Only 17% thought that most incorrect claims were due to mistakes. At the end of the survey, respondents were asked about their overall views on the potential new powers. Well over half (62%) said they were feeling either positive or very positive about them - with only 21% saying they felt negative.

However, the group of claimants were less positive with 38% saying they felt positive about the new powers and 27% feeling negative. The research has been conducted as part of DWP's £613million plan to stop an estimated £4billion being lost in fraud and error over the next five years. The new powers set to be given DWP investigators have not been officially confirmed and no official date has been given by the Government as to when these potentially new powers will come into play.

You can read the full results of the survey on GOV.UK here.